Ours is the Hunger
by Filthy Weeabu Trash
Summary: "An alien threat has risen from beyond the abyss, a swarm so vast that it blots out the stars. This horror fights neither for power nor territory, but rather to fee a hunger so insatiable that it will eventually devour the entire galaxy." -Inquisitor Lord Kryptman
1. The Apex I

**"Uh-gunku-ghunk-ghunk-dc-nugga-dunk-slunk-ghunk-mc-nunk-nunk-funku-tunk-lunk-wunkua-ghunk."**

 **SNNNRRRRRRRRK~!**

 **Ay Lemmehollaatchu, 'ow you nigga's doin, y'all be slappin that dank meme-meat? SNNNNRRRRRRRRK~! Aight! lissen 'ere, I gotchyu sum Top-Shelf NepNepNep-shizzamablam stuff fo-you. Y'all need more Nids in ya diet so I'ma gon' slam you sum dat good shit- ya dig?**

 **This takes place in the same world as Ours is the iniquitous. Read that first if you want, senpai-samma-kun-chan.**

 **I miss drugs.**

...

Step Two: Ours is the Hunger.

The Apex.

...

Alone.

Lost.

Hungry.

Three words made up its existence. Three words summarized its state of being.

One word described its character.

Lethal.

The forest rustled, trees rocked by wind as carpets of leaves swirled about along the forest floor, auburn shades of sandy yellow and dirt brown wrought together in a palette of endless fall. Skeleton trees quivered as they departed their seasonal offerings while towering pines remained stoic and green with nettled needles, casting shadows about the lonely world below.

Great clawed feet cut through the foliage as long loping strides carried an alien beast through the densely packed forest, despite its bulk not once did it disturb the trees with its passage.

It was not meant to be alone; though it was intended to act as a rouge element born apart from the greater whole. It was a vanguard organism heralding of the coming harvest across the vastness of space, secluded and isolated for countless years, a destabilizing element in the great disorder of the myriad cattle. Yet, despite all this, it was not meant to be _truly alone._ It was not meant to be deaf to the whispers of a distant and immeasurable intellect.

A Tyranid.

A Broodlord

Ten feet tall and coated in slabs of heavy chitin plate, a Tyranid Broodlord lumbered through the forests of some unknown planet. Its bulbous head swung searchingly from side to side, four powerful arms curled close to its chest, each one ending in a fist of claws more suited to a sword-masters dueling rack than anything else.

It almost matched its surroundings, garish dusty brown flesh and ochre chitin plates; the towering monstrosity was still alien in every sense of the turn.

It was alone. Completely and totally alone. It had no swarm to lead, no creatures to control; it bore no all-encompassing Hive Mind, it did not hear the bellows of the Broodlord. Everything was gone. Everything was quite.

The great mind did not see it.

A Tyranid is a simple beast with few proclivities if any at all. They rounded up to a few simple rules- consistencies that adhered to all bioforms. Eat. React. Obey. Kill. Die. Simple quantities recited through a unifying force spawned millions of billions of trillions of light-years away in a distant galaxy. The Hivemind rules all, and knew all.

The lack of its prescient gaze… was unspeakable. There was no unity, no sense of direction to puppet its mind, allowing sense and direction to fade to the background and only killing strength to remain.

For the first time since it rose from the birthing chambers, a Broodlord is 'free'.

It finds life outside the cage, utterly alien, and terrifying.

It desires the collective, needs it like an obscura addict long deprived of their drug, the sense of community that had driven it in a brutal harvest.

For all its grandeur: standing full at ten feet of bone bleached white chitin and flesh rot pale yellow skin and pulsating red muscle, it was a slimmer, shorter, more compact phage of the Broodlord strain of Tyranid Biomorphs, evolved for the densely packed underground caves of a world slated for death. The entire body of the Broodlord was a macabre show of old scars and terrible wounds.

There was a slight limp to its gate. A swaying motion that churned the leaves around it with every lumbering step as it favored its right leg. Broken shards of chitin and raw muscle hung loose on that thigh but it was all long gone and scarred over. The bone had healed, but the muscle and exoskeleton remained crippled from embedded shrapnel that refused to break down despite the acidic compounds that that inhabited its body. Only thirty minutes past was it wounded so grievously.

It had begun on a dying world that had staved off its demise by holding the reaper at gunpoint and furiously refusing the inevitable. Humans, they were called, and tenacious they were. Blistering volleys of heat tore through subterranean tunnels that stretched on seemingly without end, and equally perpetual were the swarms of termagaunts and warriors and rippers and genestealers and raveners scuttled along the tunnel walls and ceiling and floors, a tide of bone, blood, and claws with glittering yellow eyes.

Crawling, digging, swarming downwards through the crust of a planet, seeking out the lower life forms hidden beneath, consuming them bit by bit, the surface scoured clean of what little chemical and biological life existed on its barren surface- the true sweets far below.

A broken hive they were, the gestation vessel, the hive ship, wounded and crippled. Separated from the grand tendril that birthed it years ago. Weak and malnourished, it fell upon this desolate rock of few and fragile things in expectation of an easy meal.

When cornered and routed, the 3784th Mordian Iron Guard turned, and what was once thought to be prey now grinned with a mouth full of fangs.

Blue-coated soldier-humans marched in perfect formation, lasloks blistering in retaliation and scorching away gaunt broods as soon as they are birthed, Leman Russ main battle tanks ground rocks into dust behind each blistering volley, guns blazing white hot and cannons roaring in exultation.

They held the line for an unprecedented six months. Even then, it was a forgone conclusion. Cut off from the greater Imperium and left on an unknown and unloved world, the Mordians died fighting to the very last. Cut up, devoured, hacked into pieces, rippers and Tyranid detritus bacteria broke down the Guardsmen and the civilians they protected into biological slurry that would be used to heal the hive ship.

In the deepest parts of the underworld hive city, were the urchin children of mankind lived, did everything fall apart. The Tyrant led its swarm into the final recess of the world, and came across the bizarre denizens that lived there: Mutants and psykers and Hrud scavengers alike. Cave walls turned to metal decking the deeper the swarm dug, the more they ate, the more they consumed for the Hive. They found at the heart of the hive- a ship.

A grand Ark Exodus ship from before the Great Crusade of mankind.

Its coirdoors ran red, its galleys stained with viscera a, rippers tore into its metal hull, crawling through air vents and raveners rampaged through desiccated bunks and bridges. The Tyrant stalked among them all, striking down the last few dregs of resistance. It came to ahead, when the Hive Tyrant ripped the bulkhead door from the final room.

The swarm found a pulsating core of epileptic power inside.

The warp-core, the archaic and wrongly worshipped dark soul of the ship, around it did fiendish cultists dance and sway, as they at long last roused it into activation. The swarm attacked, striking down the fools, and as one did they rush the main controls, the screaming voice of the Hive Tyrant propelling them onwards as the last cultist gaily raised a blood slick hand and pressed-

The Broodlord remembered little else. It recalled a violent eruption of light and sound, a biting cold that tore at its many wounds. Voices in its mind, trying to rip away its thoughts- the thoughts of the hive. Then it stopped. It found consciousness, lying on its side under a blue sky and surrounded by trees.

Instinct was a trait given to the lesser of Tyranid bioforms, where the leader beasts were flesh-puppets for the Hive Mind. In such scenarios where the hive mind was dampened Broodlords were blessed with a level of intelligence and reasoning unseen by any of the hive minds legion myriads, save only the Great Swarmlord and Hive Tyrant that eclipsed all others.

There was never a scenario where the Hive Mind was completely gone, leaving only the coiled bundle of dendero synaptic fibers and musculatory nerves woven together within the Broodlords skull to act alone.

It acted, but only with tentative steps at first, letting its barbed serpents tongue roll out of its double-hinged maw of fangs and taste the air. Its claws held at the ready, powerful flexing muscles bunched and uncoiled in preparation for first combat that did not come. There was only the rustle of dry red leaves forged from a perpetual autumn.

So it walked.

…

It was uncertain- perhaps even confused- startled by the creatures before it and it showed on its alien visage. Its yellow beasts eyes took in the sight of the lupine beasts with coarse black coats and masked faces with mouths ringed with fangs. It did not know what to make of these things, how to deal with them, what they were- the Hive Mind was gone, nothing was certain anymore. Did it attack? Did it kill these beasts as quickly as possible so that they may not summon more? Or did it run away? Were these creatures a mortal threat to its survival, small as they were, perhaps they carried hidden lethality that was of threat to even one such as itself.

Instincts- the things of lesser bioforms- but inherent to the Broodlord made it raise its heavy claws in preparations. It was a beast of war and consummate predation even in its harried state. It would not be found wanting should the Collective return.

There were many of them, and they thought to hide, but nothing could hide from the mind of a Broodlord. Latent psychic power brought the salient whispers of unshielded thoughts into its own and it traced the psychic signatures back to their source.

They were uncertain, wary, and filled with rage.

They raged because the Broodlord existed. Some vile, bastard version of a Collective bound them together- small and un-unified, but damnably familiar to what the Broodlord remembered. Yet even so, vile individuality resonated within each beast, a horrid trait. The Lupine creature before the Broodlord took another cautious step forwards, maw of nails opening and closing in frenetic seizers.

The Broodlord could feel its lack of commitment in this motion; the size difference between the two life forms was immense. If the Lupine beast were to stand on its hind legs it could barley reach the Broodlords hip. Then there was the appearance of the Broodlord- a monstrous alien creature coated in heavy plates of chitin, steam rolling out of organic heat vents, muscle coils exposed to the cooling air, barbed hooks curling off of limbs like spiny armor, horny protrusions and six inch long claws flecked in dried blood. It outweighed the Lupine runt before it in presence alone.

A single step forwards from the Broodlord would be all it took to send the pack of Beowolves running in silent acceptance of a superior predator- for the moment.

The Broodlord is confused. The Broodlord is alone. The Broodlord is forced to think for itself for the very first time since its birth.

The Broodlord grunts and takes an uncertain step backwards.

The unintentional sign of weakness is all that the Beowolf needs.

A snarl erupts from the Alpha. Powerful hind legs packed with tense lean muscle explode into motion, propelling the lupine assassin forwards and upwards in a burst of motion. Clawed forelimbs and steak-knife teeth bared and flittering white in the filtered afternoon sun.

A hand the size of its head and set with talons sharp enough to cleave through tank armor cuts through the air and pulps its body with hysterical strength. A form no longer recognizable crashes into the ground; black fluids and blood splatter the undergrowth and foliage as the ruined body twitches before it lies still. A liquefied internal system flows out from its open maw and cratered stomach.

It was entirely reactionary- the strike, conscious thought ignored as the powerful self preservation instincts distilled into every Broodlord kick in. The Broodlord flexes its upper right forelimb, fur and blood flake from its extended talons. The rest of the pack do not hesitate with the death among them, they launch themselves from their supposed cover, five in total, the Broodlord does not know this, but this is a paltry, miniscule pack.

Five die in under a second. The Broodlord pivots, silent in motion, four rending claws lash out, one excavates the contents of a Beowulf mid-flight, a claw tearing up from groin to chin, while another is skewered on the impossible sharpness, talon punching into the brain through the underside of its mouth and out through the skull. The third is crushed in the Broodlords grip; the fourth is batted aside like the alpha of the pack. The fifth meets its hungering maw- a wicked centipede's thing, vestigial arms reformed into razor claws by the preternatural evolution of the hive mind. It opens and invites the unfortunate Beowolf into its grasp before snapping shut and cutting the lupine thing in half. Not a single Grimm remained.

The Broodlord stood alone again, not even prey around it for company

The forest is silent again.

So it walks.

…

The Broodlord is not a stupid creature.

Its mind worked in ways incomprehensible to other beings, but it was a working mind imbued with independent thought and perceived action, it was self aware- although it hated all these traits- no longer were they backed by the fearlessness of the hive mind.

They ran rampant and things that once went on as unnecessary and unnoticed forced their way to the forefront of its consciousness. Hunger, thirst, shelter, community, survival. These once compelled the Broodlord, but it was no longer subservient to them, it would abide by them, but that was different- that was choice. Hunger was not new to the Broodlord, the memories of the Collectives endless hunger was still a fresh and beautiful memory. Thirst, a shadow of hunger, shelter was brought by survival and they would be taken care of in due time.

The Broodlord lowered itself closer to the ground, sitting on its haunches as one plated arm pawed at the remains of the creatures it slew, another pack of the lupine things- it found it to be a dissolving mess of flesh and bone, breaking down into constituent parts and then atoms and then nothing- faint black warm vapors rose from the bodies. Spoiled, rotten, diseased? These questions fluttered in the Broodlords brain, and it found it curious that it would ponder such things, biomass was biomass, and biomass was the lifeblood of all Tyranid organisms regardless of what it was made out of.

The barbed tongue rolled out of its mouth as it brought the disassembling corpse to its face. It began to feed, the tongue burrowed into the skin-sack that once was a Beowolf, and began to drink from the liquefying organic matter. It was rancid slurry that the Broodlord processed in its indomitable stomach capable of breaking down diamonds if given the time. Nothing it ate went to waste, but there was little for it to take from the steaming corpses. It degraded too quickly, barley even a meal sat in its belly now. It would require more by the end of the day if it were to power the metabolism that was a Broodlord.

…

It worked its way through the forest, trudging through mud, rain, and snow and even scorching heat, it did not need much in the way of sleep. Food was simple enough. As a Tyranid, the Broodlord was not a particularly picky eater; it did not eat so much as it process biological material. Tree leaves, grasses, berries, small birds and other mammals. The Broodlord was omnivorous, voracious even, stripping bark off of trees and mulching it into its stomach to be broken down and absorbed, these were paltry snacks, even when it had stripped nearly half a forest of trees, it was not enough.

It had found many Grimm. More so, they had found it.

Tyranids had their limits, and the Broodlord was nearing the extent of its strength and endurance. By the twenty-eighth day its body was a ruin of unhealed cuts and shattered chitin. Its claws were stained a deep black-red, its left leg dragged along the ground and gore colored its hide. The beasts came after it relentlessly, throwing themselves at its stature and dying all the same. They seemed as endless as they were implacable. It had tried eating them; something never before attempted and survived. They were decidedly unpalatable, the process of their rapid decomposition continued regardless of whether they were devoured or not, their bile had begun to clog the Broodlords powerful immune system with foreign chemicals. Even the Tyranid Broodlords biological perfection could not cope with the decay forever, it needed 'clean' biomatter. Lots of it.

It needed Meat.

The smell of the black beasts permeated the land in every direction, saturating it with their stench, but another smell carried on the wind. As it followed this scent- this promise of an untainted and filling feast, the dark stink of the beasts faded into the background, and newer scents and tastes ruled- but the whispered saccharine smell of the beasts was always there. The stink of new prey was also close. Many-Prey, but different.

The desert that had played host to it finally changed after another three days of running and fighting. Stalking out from behind a sandy dune, the Broodlord gazed out across a dead landscape coated with thorny brambles and angry splintered shrubs. Beyond that, a metal fence, behind it, food. It cared little for the brown shanties spreading out behind, tall wooden towers speared up into the air at regular intervals at the edge of a dusty village. It could see clearly the figures manning these watch posts.

The Broodlord looked higher, a crystal sky loomed above, and beyond the clouds there was a desert sun just beginning its descent.

It backed into the shade behind the sand dune, its skin and bone beginning to shift in color and texture to be better suited to its environment.

It waited.

...

 **TELL ME WUT YOU FINK, FAMPAI.**


	2. The Apex II

Stalking was not in the nature of the Broodlord. It is a Leader beast, tall and imposing, uncaring of subterfuge when the Lictors and its Genestealer kin of the Collective where made in purpose for such a role. That was not to say that it was incapable of such acts, only that it was not bred for such acts. It kept itself as low as it could, hunched over, breath rasping in the night air, every inhale teasing it with the scent of pure meat.

Its clawed feet cut soundlessly into the hard desert earth, every step brought it closer, the scent of fresh meat was beginning to overwhelm what little control it had over reason. It fought back, pushed the smells aside with a closing of its scent glands. Another step, and then another. It kept its eyes on the high watchtowers, feeling the human-prey standing within. Relaxed, sleepy. They were of no threat.

Still. It payed to be cautious.

Sand under its clawed feet as the perfect cushion for its steps, it was surprisingly ginger in stepping over the barbed wire fence, great head swinging side to side, taking in the pack-rat farm, the water trough, the tufts of harsh desert shrubs spewing out of the ground, the animal droppings, the signs of the daily fight to scrape away the sand to reveal the parched earth below somehow still capable of bearing foliage only under the most tender of care. The scent of beasts. The Broodlord stalked across the field of brown plants of hoof marks, its own dwarfing those it stepped over. The moon was climbing- a shattered crescent, arching overhead, it silvered the outline of a dusty brown high roofed shed with great sliding doors that creaked when the Broodlord hooked a claw through the handle and pulled them open.

The inside of the barn was silent- fear-scent permeated every inch of it. The beasts, they could smell the blood-hunger of the Broodlord, they could feel its unnatural psychic blanket, probing their feeble minds. They were sturdy beasts, lean and hard, made for tilling even the hardest of grounds, they were not food animals to the prey of many, they were working beasts, all six of them. They were nothing but meat to the Broodlord. Meat to be consumed and converted into biomatter.

The mewling, the braying, the mournful mooing began now The Broodlord reaching into one of the stables and pulped the head of the first beast it could reach. It pulled the stable apart to get at the fresh kill, already long strands of caustic saliva splattered on the ground, steaming smoking strands, its body almost trembled as the fresh blood dripped down its throat, chunks of fat and meat soon pulped and shoved down in equal matter, bones were ground up and swallowed, organs mashed up and slurped down like so much spaghetti. It gorged, and fed, and consumed, and when it was done it tore open another stable- the animals are bucking in their pens, smashing against the gate- trying to escape, trying to survive, they shriek and they whine, the Broodlord kills them all, gobbling them down like so many sweets.

The twelfth one- the last- it wrings its neck, crushes its skull and pull its spine from the body, cracking the vertebrae, crunching them like candy. Swallowing the marrow, smashing in the ribcage, unhinging its jaw, forcing the entire corpse into its mouth, choking it down, letting it become ground up slurry as powerful acids break the offering down in a matter of seconds, its strength becoming the Broodlords.

The Broodlord belched, blood-steam hissed from the vents on its back. Silence ruled the moment save for the creaking of old wood, the continued nervous tension in the air, and ever the nightly winds whispering over cooling sands.

Then, the human began to scream.

…

She woke with a start, her heart beating fast and heavy in her breast. She pulled the covers over her head, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to keep the monsters out. They wouldn't leave. She confronted them.

The broken-moons light pooled in through the drapes, casting silver shadows across her bed and onto the floor. The whicker-branch tree just outside her window cast skeleton fingers into her room. The chill in the air did not abate when she pulled the covers slightly higher.

She heard the braying of the flock, her heart stopped beating for a moment.

Across the way, in the barn, she could hear the animals screaming. Muffled sounds, high pitched and whinnying, but she could hear them. Mr. Tubsy, Sparkles, and Melforte. She forgot about the skeleton fingers stretching darkly across her room, she through off the covers, pulled on her nightgown and shoved her feet into her ragged bunny-rabbit slippers.

She cross over to her door, making sure to pick up her whack-it-stick on the way out, the poorly greased hinges moaned as she pushed open the door to her room and closed it behind her.

…

He woke with a start. The rusted hinges to his daughters door grinding open. He rubbed his face with callused hands, the empty spot besides him all the more prevalent; he could still smell her. Her clothes were still in the dresser, he would have to clear them out- eventually- he swung his legs out, the cold wood floor sending ice up his calves, he blinked the sleep away, the moonlight shown bright.

He heard the baying of his flock, one dot connected to the other. His daughter heard it, as well- she was a notoriously light sleeper, the only thing that could motivate her to get out of bed were the animals. He heard the front door open softly, and close just as quietly. He slipped on his boots, and opened his closet- doubled barrels, black iron, it felt right in his hands, he opened the release and fitted two slugs in, a second of hesitation saw him pocket four more.

Then he was out of his room; his son heard the commotion, peeking, eyes bright, face scrunched up and curious. "Get your gun," He whispered, though there was no one else to wake up. "Sumthin' in with the herd." At this the Boy perked up, ducking back into his room, pulling on his shoes and a coat. He waddled out after his father; bolt action slung over one shoulder just like he saw the soldiers do it. He'd have to teach him proper- eventually. "Your Sis' ran out to check," He said evenly. "Told'ya it'd be better 'f she slept in your room."

"Too old fer that, dad." His son replied, it was a conversation his father had been pressing more ever since mom passed. The boy knew it was just because his father didn't want to risk the same thing happening to either of them. "She's fine, les just go get her, I'll take her back, you handle what's' ail'n the beasts."

…

She heard noises she wasn't familiar with, the sound of snapping, popping. What worried her though was the lack of noises she did know. One by one, the whines and moos of the friends she'd known all her life grew quieter- or just curtailed all together. The stink came next, and she covered her mouth and nose with a hand, her Whack-It-Stick held tight in the other, a breeze rustled her nightgown. She walked down to the barn; the steady beat of her heart picking up a tick.

It was light enough from the moon to see where she was stepping, to see formations in the ground. She did not see the massive set of claw prints as she opened the barn door- it was loose. Something had gone inside.

It took her a moment to register what she was seeing.

It took her a moment to pick apart the various pieces of flesh and meat and blood and bones, to make a shape out of the shadows. To discern a shape she wasn't familiar with.

She cocked her head to the side, a thing pulled the pieces of… of something apart, the sounds of wet smacking, the drip-drip-drip of a liquid, the rotten stench, the rancid stench, the familiar scent of a homely barn desecrated by a do-it-yourself abattoir. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and opened the door a bit more- to let some moonlight in-

There was an eye. It was yellow and bright. It was looking at her.

…

It was watching from the barn entrance the Broodlord had so demurely opened. It must have heard the screaming of its cattle. The silence stretched into a quarter minute, each party waiting for the other to make the first move.

The Prey started screaming.

The Broodlord moved.

It was never a contest, the single step crossed the distance to the prey, and the claw cut cleanly through the neck without a hint of resistance. The body staggered forwards for several feet while the head was grasped in the massive talons of the Broodlord.

There was no more screaming, just the creaking of old wood; the tension of a wooden structure, the winds, the dripping of blood onto hay.

It had time now; the Broodlord ran its tongue over its teeth, cleaning the stained yellow bone of blood and viscera. It rolled the head in its lower pair of hands, eyes searching the dumb and dead face of what was once a 'human.'

Except it was not.

The ears were wrong, the facial structure malformed. Genetic triggers stood out from the average human-prey. This was most certainly not one of the Crafted Humans of the Warrior type. It was an Aberrant, the long ears aside the head marked it as such.

It popped the head into its maw, crunching it like a grape- waste nothing- it sauntered forwards, pulling the body into the barn and consuming it whole with a single bite. Bone, clothes and gristle went down without issue; it swallowed and grabbed a discarded piece of Beast that it had overlooked-

Shouting, yelling, screams. Panic- the air tasted of it.

Then there was shooting.

Something punched into its shoulder, ricocheting off and then two more light impacts that failed to even dent the heavy carapace of the Broodlord. Almost with a sense of leisure it raised its great head from the ruined carcass gripped in all four hands, and stared at the pair of prey-things. Two of them, armed with what appeared to be weapons. Long barreled instruments of wood and metal; they were aimed at the Broodlord respectively. It cared not. They were useless,

Ballistic-explosive-combustion weaponry, common to the human-prey and fungus-prey that resisted the pull of the collective, they operated on the principle that a fast moving metallic-type object would be able to terminate or incapacitate a fraction of the collective. It was partially viable, but it was nothing that a solid plate of ablative chitin-armor couldn't solve, as was now demonstrated. A flash illuminated the interior of the barn- subtly different from the regular bullet-weapons so favored by the fungus and human preys. The round snapped through the air, closing the distance between the half-human-prey and the Broodlord in the course of an instant. It crumpled against the bony carapace of the Broodlords chest, flattening and shattering before falling away. The Broodlord let its tongue slither out of its mouth, tasting the fear, the despair, and the hate.

It walked forwards.

...

The smaller not-human-prey tried to run, rather than fight, self-preservation taking charge in the end. The older prey fired again, projectile winging out and crumbling against the front of the Broodlord. The Broodlord lashed out, spearing the prey on one of its claws and lifting it up to regard it closely. The prey shared a passing resemblance to the child-aberrant; it must have been of the same brood. The blood confirmed it, genetic triggers pulled from the Aberrant-prey by its tongue told of direct heritage.

Its maw extended, the prey screamed past bloody lips, and the Broodlord ate it in three short bites, its legs slithered down its throat last, it could still feel the preys strangled cries in the pit of its stomach before stomach acid dissolved the preys vocal cords and tongue.

Something hard and fast struck its shoulder. A crack sounded to its left along the walls of the village. Another crack, something pinged off a rock just by its feet.

Another, and then another.

It turned, its eyes piercing the gloom. It saw the watchtowers in the distance light up as automatic weapons panned over towards its location. In the village a bell begun to ring, and soon there were several answering bells. Another crack, a round flattened itself against the Broodlords bony chest.

The volume of fire increased, a constant chatter hammering down from the nearest three watchtowers. Loud wailing screams mechanical in nature began to shrilly screech from the village dwellings. The Broodlord tucked its head down close to its body, its arms folding over it, bullets spackled off of its hide. It grunted and sniffed as a lucky round ledged itself between a break in the plates. A trickle of blood was instantly clotted. Sounds within the city, voices, alarms, crying, fear.

Heavy caliber bullets spacked against its back, without looking it stepped forwards, knocking through a fence, trampling seeds tended to with a fanatical discipline, it reached the watch tower, the shouting from above inside increased. It ripped a support strut out with one hand, the structure shuddered, leaning heavily, screaming from the cabin up top, more shouting, the Broodlord pulled, the structure began to list- and then it began to fall. It hit the sand, breaking apart, metal and glass mixed together, -more shooting- bullets impacted off its back,

It could smell them- the familiar scents. The scents of a world before it was consumed- brought into the collective. The scent of burning cordite, of blood drenching the ground, of smoke on the wind, the fear stink of the prey, the sweet saccharine odors of sweat and feces, the smell of burning metal and splintered bones, of roasting wood and shattered homes, the sweet fragrance of harvest. The Broodlord didn't even realize it had been moving when it tore the gates to the city off its hinges.

…

They talk of the day Asernyl died. The day the frontier city of Asernyl on the border between Vacuo and Vale went silent. The day when its people were found devoured, how the cities streets were filled with blood and brass, shell casings and strips of torn clothing and strips of mangled flesh and bits of bone. They talked about the carnage, the destruction, how there was so much gore, so much mayhem, but only did certain channels talk about what else had happened to Asernyl.

Asernyl was raided. Every house, every store front, every market and emergency vault- every single one was smashed in, torn open, ransacked of anything worth eating. The entire city was an empty- bloodstained- pantry. It was like some malignant force tore its way through the people, cutting them down and devouring them, before moving on to the sweets. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, desert, an entire frontier town of four hundred people silenced in a single night. Their legacy was a severed hand still gripping tight the trigger of its machine gun.

They blamed the Grimm- some new type of predatory beasts that eats what it kills and everything else- a denial organism that leaves nothing to be scavenged for the parched land of Vacuo. It was just another trial for its people to overcome, the CCT was down, the world was on the brink of another war, Grimm beasts attacked in ever increasing numbers, the white fang struck relentlessly, and a new faction of evil was rising. It did not matter to the people of Vacuo- they endured.

Nothing would change that. Not the Grimm, not the White Fang, not anything spawned from Remnant.


	3. The Apex III

**Yes I ScK Dicc Fr casH hw Did Yu no?**

Forty miles of golden-white beach kissing the open sea, pearlescent blue waves lapping at the shore. Crashing breakers and the smell of distant lands, the lonely horns of tugboats and freighter ships hauling cargo imports. The swearing of dock-masters and merchantmen, salt and sea-life; many-hooked fishing lines casting out into the green-blue deep. The laughter of young children sprinting along the shoreline, ducking in and out of the encroaching and departing tide, small hands clasping pretty shells and sea-glass, clambering up onto busy docks to weave in and out of crowds.

This is the Sodomah sprawl, the single largest series of ports in all of Vacuo, it is also now the only thing that Vacuo has left.

It was once many ports; all spread out and alone along the northeastern stretch of coastline where the desert met the sea. Over time roads, caravan routs, train tracks and highways were carved out to connect the many disparate ports. Homes, markets, workshops and havens were constructed along these many different routs as stations and shelters for travelers to rest without fear of the Grimm or the harsh desert climate. Soon, the Sodomah sprawl became a single entity; watchtowers and walls guarded against desert Grimm incursions.

With the fall of Beacon academy and the Vale CCT, Sodomah port became the lifeblood of Vacuo as a whole. The forested regions of Vacuo are inhospitable; stalking in the shaded groves were the Grimm- millions of them. Ancient Grimm beasts stalked the forests, always multiplying. They came out at night when the sun ceased its hateful glare upon the sands of Vacuo; the Grimm would spill out from their homes, into the desert like a snarling swarm of red eyes in the darkness. They would rip through the settlements of homesteaders looking to harvest the natural bounty of the mountain forests- unprepared for the beasts that spilled out like ants from a disturbed nest.

Yet, in the morning light, the desert- the universal enemy to the inhabitants of Vacuo- became a burning guardian. The Grimm never traveled far from the forests when the sun rose high; the cursed beasts would suffer; only a few of their species could withstand the punishing climate. Those that were unsuited to the intense heat would die of thirst and heatstroke.

Some would always make it across the desert. There were always the lucky ones that found shade or a hidden desert oasis, some would even slaughter isolated settlements and rest there among the butchered. They would sleep during the day and move at night, making there way to the largest concentration of human and Faunus life in Vacuo.

So it came to be, that what Grimm the desert could not kill, the inhabitants of the Sodomah sprawl did. They are fierce individuals who made their living off the bounty of the sea, the only thing crueler than the desert. They were patriots one and all; they knew that with the CCT destroyed in Vale, they were well and truly alone in the world.

Shipments from other nations could not get through; information was sparse, international trade ground to a halt, overland and air travel up through the Vale was impossible. The sea became the only option for Vacuo- its bounty was no longer a commodity; it was the blood of Vacuo's Kingdom.

Food and water were scarce in the Desert. Dust, metal and ores were in plentiful supply but the things required for daily survival were never easy to come by. The people of the Sodomah sprawl had it easier than those in the wastelands, saltwater could be distilled into drink given enough time and energy, and fishing saw to the needs of hunger. So it now came to be that the dock-lords of Sodomah now 'selflessly' provided now for the rest of Vacuo, distributing food and water that the desert cities could not procure otherwise- all for a hefty price, of course.

The roads into the Vacuo desert that the armored caravans of Sodomah traveled were fast becoming the veins and arteries of Vacuo. Sodomah was growing in power- even the Shade Academy was feeling the inadequacy of its standing in the turbulent times. Where they were once the final say in the happenings of Vacuo, they now found their authority dimming. Hunters could not provide food. Hunters could not provide shelter. Hunters were just people who could kill Grimm. The people of Sodomah could also do that- and provide at the same time.

Like they always have, the people of Vacuo would survive.

This, of course, could not be allowed to happen.

If Sodomah had become the heart of an entire nation, then it was only right to skewer it while it was exposed, to burn it to the ground and drive the stake home. It was an open target, one that could not be ignored.

Besides, it had been too long since Wilt and Blush last drew blood.

…

The exoskeleton broke- fractured apart, the immense physical force the Broodlord exerted crushing the insectoid Grimm. The Broodlords foot smashed through its back and out its underside- guts and gore splattering the hot desert sand. The Broodlord pulled, four arms exerting their strength and ripping the wriggling tail of the Death Stalker free and flinging it away- discarded. The Broodlord set to work ripping the legs from the body- still it writhed; pincers snapping fruitlessly as the Broodlord dismantled the Grimm beast in the same manner a bully would pull the limbs off a child's doll- piece by bloody piece.

It was an unnecessarily gruesome kill; it was a showy display of raw power that a Tyranid needn't enact. A Tyranid did not waste energy, a Tyranid did not display its superiority through showy acts of 'valor', a Tyranid did not waste- period. It was a kill that bespoke of a deep-seated discontent- the Grimm beast had not been an opponent, but a tool for the Broodlord to vent its aggression upon.

It would not be inaccurate to say that the Broodlord had grown frustrated. While emotions were the things that plagued lesser creatures, the Tyranid Leader bioform was not devoid of baser empathies- the sensation of fruitlessness among them. All Tyranids were designed for a purpose- a singular drive commanding them onwards in the interests of the Hive Mind.

Move. Devour. Kill. Destroy. Hunt. Die.

These were the drives that pushed the lesser bioforms onwards. For the Broodlord, it was significantly more complex. It held a wide variety of compulsions, but above all, was the desire to _Command_. It was a Leader beast capable of commanding entire broods to do the bidding of the Hive Mind; it was the focal point for that grand gestalt intelligence from beyond the stars. To not be in contact with it or any form of the collective was immensely unsettling. It missed that feeling of omnipotence that came with commanding the lesser broods, the sensation of being everywhere at once, of total control and supremacy.

So it vented its frustrations on the skittering beasts that plagued this Desert. There was no shortage of them. The Broodlord left thousands of broken corpses in its wake, discarded and ruined along its meandering path.

It was following a trail, and that trail turned was a scent.

The Grimm beasts, the skittering things, they all traveled in one direction- to the East. The smell of waves was not what called them, but what drifted on that smell- the smell of Prey, of Human life. Tyranids existed to consume. Without anything left to direct it that was what the Broodlord decided it would do. It would consume, it would destroy, hunt, kill, and hopefully after it had hunted and destroyed and killed, it would finally be able to die.

It walked. Late into the evening, through the night, and into dawn, it walked. Crushing whatever crawled along its path, ripping Death Stalkers apart, discarding their shattered remains, its eyes glowing hot yellow-white.

It saw the first hints of buildings as it crested a sand dune in the still dark hours of the morning, the sun not yet cresting the far-away mountains. Heavy fogbanks rolled in from a vast ocean. A civilization hugged the eastern coastline from north to south. The keen eyes of the Tyranid Broodlord could make out the shapes of ships skirting out into the waves, trailing drag nets and lines. It was nothing like the settlement it had crushed, its blood still plastered to its carapace- dried on by the hot desert sun.

This port-city was vastly larger, more heavily populated, filled to the brim with the disunited prey-things. It was enough to make the Broodlords stomach churn and hearts throb. It wasn't hate.

It was exasperation.

It was looking at the city, and feeling nothing but the preemptive fatigue of a grinding day of continuous hunting. It flexed its muscles, blood only now starting to churn in its veins- still cold and sluggish without the heat of combat to warm them. Its clawed feet churned the sand underfoot, its tail dragged.

It watched the first of several dozen fireballs erupt from the docks along the waterfront of the city below.

It heard the thunderclap of the explosions seconds later, and then the screaming of Prey things.

The sun was still low. It would have waited until night, procrastinated for as long as it could have.

The scent of cordite in the air.

Heat began to warm its blood.

Blood-scent drifting on the winds.

Its hearts began to truly beat.

This seemed as good a time as any.

…

Draw, cut, reset. Let the blade do the work, don't force it- don't hack, don't slash, let the momentum carry the motion through. Don't push the blade, don't pull it, it possesses its own motion. You carry that motion through its movements, maintain it, you do not alter it aside from giving it that initial tug of direction.

It was not as complicated as it sounded, but it was important to keep in mind, all the same. The bodies hit the ground with that familiar, satisfying meaty thud they always seemed to make once the life left their eyes and the dead weight settled in. A still living person always compensated for falling, trying to lessen the impact. A corpse had no such scruples; it went down in the most expedient way possible.

Adam stepped over the trio of corpses, cleaning the blood from Wilt with his thumb before sheathing it home in Blush. It payed to take care of your weapons, they were more reliable than people, no matter how devoted they were. People had the annoying tendency to not explain the full detail of their plans- such as that fiasco at beacon showed, the 'Goddess' was frustratingly obscure in regaling in full the extent of her operations- a fact that had caused him more than a few soldiers in the end. Support hadn't been in proper positions, objectives changed at the last minute, what should have been a complete takeover of both Beacon and Vale City resulted in only Beacon falling and the City suffering instead of dying.

Quite embarrassing.

He felt that the White Fang more than deserved this off the books operation. It was outside of Salem's jurisdiction, and while the White Fang didn't answer to Salem, Adam was more than aware enough to know who was pulling the strings these days. Everything revolved around Salem; everything went through her one way or another. Such was why they called her 'Queen' or 'Goddess'. At least, that was what Adam liked to believe why they called her so.

Because there was the matter of her relation to the Grimm, her ability to control…

Adam didn't like to think about that. It lead to questions with answers he did not wish to hear.

The Sodomah Sprawl. He'd never been in person before, but he's heard plenty about it, lots of stories, and lots of promise. Too many humans. There were always too many humans. Even when there weren't any humans there was still the stink of them left behind. He's waded through enough human blood that all he could ever smell was their stench; it was like a sickly sweet odor that no amount of bathing could ever get off. The Faunus of Vacuo smelled like Humans, the stench was on them, and it too wouldn't scrub out. It had to be burned off. That started with Sodomah.

The White fang had always been touchy about Vacuo. Some wanted it destroyed- Adam heartily agreed- others wanted it to be left alone, as Vacuo wasn't like the other nations. The Faunus in Vacuo are more or less treated as equals, something that became more and more prominent each passing day. It didn't matter what you were in the desert, so long as you could pull your weight and survive. In all honesty, Vacuo was a success story in the eyes of the early Wight Fang. Humans and Faunus working together in order to make a better living.

The stink. The stink. By all the Maidens and their glory- _The_ _Stink_.

Adam always had plans for destabilizing Vacuo. They mostly revolved around Shade Academy, the only true power in the deserts. It was too heavily defended- too many hunters. An attack would never work. The long game was the only option. That changed when the CCT fell, and Sodomah rose to power. Despite the well-drilled military force Sodomah possessed, the White Fang was a military organization in its own right nowadays, they had the equipment to topple a city state like Sodomah. If there were any Hunters, well, there was a reason he had come in person.

A few well placed dust bombs, and any hope for an effective counter attack went up in smoke.

So began the slaughter.

Gunfire. Explosions. Screams. The sounds of retribution. Adam let Wilt sing in concert to these sounds, whistling through the air, the hum of it drawing from Blush. When a Human was too far away for his leisurely stroll along the dockside waterfront to catch, he answered with Blush, the recoil sending out his greetings with every squeeze of the trigger.

It's been awhile since he'd honestly smiled. He thinks the last time was with Blake- and so goes his smile.

A few more pulls of the trigger and its back, the memory fading.

He wasn't a fan of sea insertions.

He didn't like water all that much, when you were in the water, you were vulnerable to the creatures that were born in it.

He could tolerate it for enough time, the submersibles had worked out perfectly. Running aground in the shallows, disgorging the White fang soldiers, a complete surprise attack right after the infiltrators set off their explosives. The only objective left was pandemonium. Kill as many as you could, destroy as much as you could. Then go home. There was no simpler plan. Nothing more fools proof. Even if Hunters appeared, they would be far too late to stop what had been set in motion. Even a slight delay in the Caravans would cause untold deaths out in the desert.

He intended to cause far more than just a slight delay. If this worked out, Vacuo would be crippled permanently, picked apart by thirst and starvation, and the Grimm. Although, the people of Vacuo are a sturdy bunch, the White Fang would likely have to help them along their way to final destruction.

There was a hand-crank pump by the docks; it connected to a fuel dump that was looking rip to burst and set alight a string of dockside warehouses. Adam gestured one of his associates over. "Light it," He ordered. "It needs to burn, now." He was answered with the chatter machinegun fire riveting holes into the side of the heavy steel tank- fresh fuel spilling out over the ground and an errant spark catching its edge.

The smell of charring wood and burning fish was as beautiful as the ripple of the newly born explosion. Adam spun on a heel, waving his comrades after him. There was still much work to be done 'fore the days end. There was still killing to do.

…

Bravery and ignorance went hand in hand.

Bravery is recognizing your fear and managing to push it aside, to charge headlong into that primal source of fear and meet it in combat and destroy it. Bravery is the act of making fear your Bitch. Ignorance is bravery even when you should be afraid. It is looking doom in the eye and confronting it head on. Ignorance is the act of denial. Ignoring how out of depth you are and the water is rising. A brave fool is a dead fool.

The Broodlord doesn't contemplate any of this as it smashes its way through a fish market, thorny carapace hide making splinters of wood and clawed feet cracking the ground with every lunging step. Automatic weapons fire brackets it every step of the way, Prey is resisting; desperately throwing everything they have at the monster. A truck skids to a halt just outside of the market plaza, on the back is mounted a heavy machine gun, the operator wipes his brow, charging the weapon with a solid rack of the slide- the belt loads perfectly and he swings the weapon- designed to punch through armored targets- and depresses the firing studs.

Like successive frag-grenades going off, the machine gun throws out heavy caliber rounds at a blistering rate; the operator grits his teeth, fighting to keep the barrel down as smoking shell casings fall into the back of the truck, collecting around his boots. The bullets cut through tarps, tents, signs and rip through freshly caught fish, turning them into red mist before smacking home into the Broodlord.

They do absolutely nothing.

Even at point blank range- as the Broodlord backhands a stall out of its way, the metal jacketed lead rounds crumple against the breastplate of the Broodlord- the Operator is screaming, the driver shifts into reverse, hits the gas, wheels squeal as the truck starts to peel away- a heavy hand with ragged talons grips the front of the technical- claws rip into the armored hood- one pierces the radiator. Rubber begins to burn and smoke as the Broodlord heaves, dragging the entire truck forwards, all four limbs tear into the front hood and it _lifts_ the truck, the weapons operator shouts and tumbles off, his weapon goes silent. He has a moment to stare back up as the monster slams the truck back down onto his head- chassis breaking apart, metal bending, oil leaking, glass shattering- blood leaks from underneath the ruined machine.

The Broodlord steps onto the ruined vehicle, clawed feet smashing down what had not already been flattened. Acidic saliva is dripping from its maw- locked open into a perpetual howl, pink red steam huffs from its back vents, blood lubricates its hands, its barbed and pincered tail sways dangerously behind it. It is a powerful creature, and it radiates its rightful superiority. Its torso heaves with deep steadying breathes- the red-raging abyss is still stirring in the back of its mind, the driving instinct- its desire to kill and render all non-Tyranid life a malignant afterthought. It has always slaughtered on the terms of the Hive Mind, its gestalt psychic intelligence holding its bloodlust in check. Without that commanding presence, it felt its mind beginning to slip into something more basic, something more feral- held back only by the shrewd cunning of its sentience.

The Broodlord cocks its head, the sounds of further gunfire drawing its attention- the killing intent returns at a low simmer. It tramples over the dead that litter the street before it.

…

The Cobalt and Sapphire cross- the emblem of the Port Watch, a symbol that holds more respect in Vacuo then that of the Shade Academy in these dark days. To be a part of the Port Watch is to stand against the hellish landscape of Vacuo, to stand against the Grimm, to stand against the failures of the Hunter Academies, and to stand against the forces that would see civilization in Vacuo come to an end.

The Port Watchmen dealt with corruption, Grimm invasions, illegal trafficking, and crime. They were not so much a Police force as they were a standing Army that held Sodomah to task. They were strict disciplinarians that did not tolerate the failings of others; as they knew that Sodomah walked a thin line between the land and the sea- each holding their own dangers and freely gifting them to the last safe haven in all of Vacuo.

By day, they faced the struggles of enforcing law, slave-gangs and terrorists, Caravan guarding and bandits.

By night, they faced the Grimm; scuttling overland, vast hordes of Death Stalkers came to pick apart the city defenses.

The White Fang were viewed no differently.

When the first bombs went off it just came as another call to action. Body armor was thrown on, rifles grabbed, visors flipped down and precincts raised the alarm.

In short: Sodomah went to war.

Sodomah hit back hard, but the White Fang was hitting even harder.

The Port Watch was working to minimize civilian casualties- trying to get the people of Sodomah to safety, trying to protect what mattered most. The White Fang had no such scruples, they opened fire into crowds, they let the barrel glow red as casings landed steaming in pools of murky blood; they let the magazine run dry and after that they went to work with blades and clubs.

At their head was the Bloody Bull, half mask streaked with crimson, ruby blade hacking through flesh, tearing apart the defenders with unrestrained contempt- he was a beast finally let off the leash, allowed to run rampant through the streets of Sodomah, picking apart the Port Watch one head at a time. He became a nightmare made real and not restrained to the confines of the night, he haunted during the day.

There was a greater and far darker dream in Sodomah this day, however, and it was a fiend among fiends in a universe of nightmares.

…

Adam reloaded Blush. Pinned down behind a shipping crate as he was, he had nothing better to do as the Port Watch machine gun let loose with the full two hundred rounds. The hard calibers punched dents into the steel siding of his crate, some smashing through and tearing up whatever was inside. He slotted home another five rounds- filling the internal magazine well and snapping his weapon back into action, shutting the loading port. The emplaced weapon had caught them off-guard, nestled behind a barricade over-watching a killing field cleared of any cover and guarding several stacked warehouses that led up to this part of the ports precinct. Beside him were his lieutenants, trusted advisors that he knew would follow him into hell after the things they had done together in the name of the White Fang.

"Want me to frag 'em?" One of his soldiers asked, hefting the grenade launcher- a move made impressive knowing the meaty weapons weight when loaded.

Adam shook his head, "Not yet." Again the rounds continued to slam home, he counted down, two seconds before he could finish, he heard the rapid clicking of a pin hitting an empty chamber; the gunner had run dry. "Now, if you may."

"You got it, boss." The Soldier grunted; swinging out from behind the stack of cargo containers, almost at once a barrage of fire returned- Adam recognized the sound of heavy assault rifles- reinforcements. He scowled, doubly so when a bullet struck the grenadier in the shoulder- his shot went wild- and another round punched through his skull, another through his neck on the way down.

"I guess reinforcements have arrived." Adam grunted, loosening Wilt.

"What should we do?" One of his soldiers asked, Adam shook his head; he felt like laughing, this was going to be fun.

"You?" He said, "You won't be doing anything." He stepped out of cover.

Twenty steps

The first shot was always the trickiest in his opinion. After that, it was all down to rhythm-

Eighteen steps

Wilt cleared bloom like always, the sweet sound of release, the ruby edge gleaming in the cresting sun-

Sixteen steps

He could feel the bullet leaving the muzzle, the flash ensuing quickly after-

Fourteen steps

Instinct took over, driving his legs forwards, his blade swinging up, every sense on a needle; the impact was jarring at first-

Twelve steps

The lead round tumbled over his left shoulder- already wilt was moving to deflect the next-

Ten steps

A small squad of Port Watchmen, cobalt body armor over sapphire uniforms, rugged heavy rifles thumping off rounds from behind the barricade-

Eight steps

The gunner was furiously working to load in another belt in to the machine gun that had been the cause of so much trouble-

Six steps

Running low, keeping close to the ground, moving fast- not in a straight line, so many things to keep note of- there was unsafe and then there was something like this-

Four steps

It wasn't a good thing to be the center of attention in situations like this, but he was the only one who could accomplish such a task, Wilt sung again, bullets were turned aside, cut in half-

Four steps

The gunner closes the chamber, the Port Watchmen flick their guns to fully automatic, they pump out the lead, Adam leaps and rolls, his coat catches a spread of bullets but they do not hit him-

Two steps

Wilt flashes crimson again- sparks ignite in the air, he flicks out Blush and pulls the trigger- one of the Watchmen go down but the others intensify their fire, the Gunner racks the slide-

One step

Wilt parts the air, it tears through the jugular of one Watchman, arcing to cut through the gunner before he can depress the firing studs, it all seems to happen in slow motion, it all seems to blend together into one eternally perfect second stretched into the course of several hours- perhaps even days.

It is in this heightened state of awareness, that Adam first sees it in all of its bloodstained gory glory.

Maybe around ten feet in height, four arms, legs with an extra joint ending in clawed feet, an exoskeleton covered in heavy plates of chitin and thorns, that was where anything that made sense ended, and the surreal began.

It turns, several yards away behind the barricade; Adam doesn't even notice his own sword decapitating the gunner.

It took Adam a moment to process what he was seeing. He was almost tempted to take off his mask and look again. He was even reaching for it when it came to a stop, its bulbous head lolling on its broad shoulders to stare in his direction. He can hear his men rushing from cover behind him, stopping at once when they see what their leader is staring at.

There was no describing it, no analogues he can compare it too- his brain hiccups, and he blinks, trying to clear whatever it was that was making him see this thing from his eyes, it remains there: horrific and unearthly.

One of his soldiers screams.

The monstrosity roars.

...

 **Why is Robo-T Guiloman allowed to have a qt3.14 Eldar GF? It ain fair my niBBa. It just aint fair.**


	4. The Apex IV

**tfw when you havn't sucked dick for five straight minutes and your startin' to ge tthe shakesies.**

...

The Grimm are a cruel and varied species. There are many of them, and many different kinds. New species of Grimm are not uncommon, as there seems to be no unified originating species that all Grimm are descendent from.

They are all dangerous and violent animals as a rule, there are no exceptions. They exist only to cause strife to the people of Remnant; that is their only purpose in life. This is a truth that everyone knows: Grimm Kill People.

Even with such a defining genetic trait is ingrained into a species' biology, Adam believed that this new creature was taking it bit too far.

Six seconds.

All it needed was six seconds, and the battle was decided.

He is the last one left alive. His lieutenants are dead. Blush is a heap of twisted metal. His mask is cracked. His clothing is in ribbons and his left arm was starting to go numb. He holds Wilt in his right hand- nicks and cuts line the blades length.

It was playing with him. Mocking him. It circled him like a shark observing its next meal. Hellish yellow eyes stared down at him as the rippling exoskeleton form of the Broodlord shook the ground with each lumbering step- its lurching gait hid an agility and spryness not readily apparent, but Adam knew all too well just how fast this thing could move if it wanted to.

He honestly did not know how he was still alive right now.

It came again- it attacked, stepping out of its malignant circle- it was eerie how silent it was- it did not roar, it did not shriek and squeal unless it wanted to, it just acted with its devilish lethality. Adam threw up Wilt and jumped back, his feet left the ground at the same time one of its hands crashed into his sword- he flew twelve feet before he hit the ground. He didn't even get the chance to activate his Aura.

It could have ran him down and torn him to pieces, hacked him up while blood leaked down his face and obscured his vision. It didn't, it was watching him struggle- he tried to sit up, clambering to his feet- something was loose in his side, jabbing into his lung. He couldn't take another hit like that, but he wasn't sure that if he had a choice in the matter.

He took a step back; his foot collided against something.

…

A Broodlord did not have a memory. A memory is a flawed thing that can degrade and forget. Broodlords did not forget. They did not yield to the degradation of time that the other lesser and disunited species suffered from.

Genetic Legacy. A gift from the great Hive-Mind that molded every Tyranid life form in the Norn-Queens birthing chambers. What a Lictor learned from spying on Eldar scouts, a termagaunt sectors away knew as well. The Broodlord knew every living being encountered by the Tyranids in this galaxy: countless trillions upon trillions upon trillions of flora and fauna, both sentient and non-sentient.

Human beings were among the most common and were as infernally stubborn as they were varied. They fought and they fought and they died in droves but they never stopped fighting even when the sky itself was stolen away from them and their atmosphere siphoned they still fought until the air was sucked from their lungs. The Tyranids knew Human genealogy with a bitter intimacy, the Tyranids knew what Humans were physically capable of, perhaps even better than the humans knew themselves- and the Broodlord knew how best they die- how best to _kill_ them.

The creature before it was not human- not fully human. It was an aberration, one of the outcast things that sulk in the bowls of worlds infested by human-prey. Unlike that prey this creature did not die so easily.

Three times. The Broodlord had hit this creature three times. Each strike was powerful enough to tear a human in half, but all it did to this creature was knock it around- it kept getting back up. It was different- subtly so, the Broodlord could tell- from the other aberrations that followed it. This creature held power.

The red flicker over its body, the strange energies that intercepted each of the Broodlords strikes; did this creature possess one of the machine things that Human-prey used to protect themselves with? The Broodlord did not see such a device and in the end it did not care- it mattered little.

It was far more concerned with the thrill it was glutting itself upon.

Killing had been such an empty thing. The Numbing sense of the Hive Mind, its omnipotent control that sapped away thought until at that remained was instruction and obedience. Now that the stifling blanket that was that presence was gone the Broodlord at first knew fear and uncertainty.

Now it knew freedom.

It was an even more frightening concept- but it was so very intoxicating.

The Creature before it- the Broodlord did not know why it had not killed it yet, the Broodlord could have done so many different times but it had refrained. The first blow against its feeble frame had failed to destroy it- now it interested the Broodlord.

It was a thing that didn't break when handled roughly- it could be bashed around, thrown about and it would still get back up. It would try to run away and the Broodlord would chase it down. The Broodlord knew vaguely of the concept of 'Futility,' it was what the creature attempted to overcome every time it swung its sword at the Broodlord.

Fun. Playing. These were things it did not know about.

Yet.

The Creature was standing up again. This time, it was going to try to run. This time the Broodlord would kill it. It would break its spine and see how far it could bend and twist before coming apart.

Curiosity.

Its great-clawed feet splintered the ground. The Creature took something from the ground- the pile of broken bodies.

The Creature aimed and fired the Grenade Launcher.

…

The things it took to break a person were not as grandiose as some would like to believe. In all honesty it was rather petty, the ways people crumbled to pressure and threats. They only ever thought about themselves, and the more benevolent only ever thought about themselves and the people close to them. The bigger picture was out of their focus, out of their sight, out of their mind.

The lives of thousands and the safety of an entire kingdom suddenly and miraculously didn't matter to a person who saw a gun held to his crying daughters' head.

Seras Kyuli stared at the Warden, she had honestly hoped that the Warden wouldn't break; that he'd keep his mouth shut and do the right thing. That he wouldn't throw away everything and everyone he had fought- and he had fought _hard_ \- to protect. His daughter had to go and cry after she put a bullet through his knee- tears streaming down her face, snot in her nose, those awful hiccupping cries- the kind that kids make when they're seeing something so awful that they can't even comprehend it. They broke the man, tore him to shreds and he told them everything- he spilled every last little detail about the cities communications network, every code to every armory, he even told her things she hadn't asked for.

White Fang members cracked open city armories and stole military grade weaponry. White Fang scrolls were updated with guard communications and movements- they ambushed Watchmen from angles that were previously safe. What was at first a deadlock now became a slaughter. He could have kept his mouth shut, not told them a damn thing. She would have shot his kid, she wasn't bluffing, but he would have denied them the information the White Fang needed in order to break this city. His men would have pushed them back into the sea, and the heart of Vacuo would beat again- the kingdom would live.

More importantly, Adam Taurus would have lost face.

That wasn't going to happen now. That freak Salem would probably applaud Adam on his initiative; he'd likely go up in rank even. He'd have even more sway over the White Fang and how it operates. She could see the train of destruction he'd lead across Remnant all for the sake of his perverted sense of Justice.

She looked at the bodies of the Warden and his daughter, unceremoniously shoved in the corner of the control room- two bullets, one through each of them. She looked down at the pistol in her hand, three rounds lighter. She wondered if she was any better than him, and she immediately shook her head. That wasn't even a question; she knew exactly what she was.

"Set the charges. We're done here." She told one of her soldiers, hooking her thumb to the array of monitors that flickered through various security cameras lined about Sodomah, all of them had a clear display of the carnage throughout the port city.

It was like every other building she walked out of while wearing the mask: holes in the wall, torn plaster and blood smears from hands trying to find purchase. Bullet casings clicking with every step and more than once she had to step over a body- some were still breathing- she rectified that.

Seras shoved the weapon through her waistband and instead drew a cigarette- it was funny, she always though that they were clichéd' in the movies, attempts to make some character look more hard-bitten or something, she knew better now. Sometimes you needed something to take the edge off, and it was either this or habits she wouldn't be caught dead with.

She'd been to Vacuo a couple times before. It was a hellhole that she didn't want to go back to, the days were hot and the nights freezing. Sand was always in the wind and the water tasted like iron. The people stank to high hell- they didn't wash their clothes or bathe- again, water was a commodity that couldn't be wasted.

When she was put on the roster for this mission she honestly thought that it would be a mercy to put the people of Vacuo down once and for all. Put them out of their misery for having to live in the sandy hellhole that was the desert. People didn't deserve to live that kind of existence- were every day is a struggle, as a Faunus she knew that lesson better than most did.

Reconnoitering Sodomah had been a real eye opener.

It was an entirely different place. The people weren't grim-faced husks, they were happy, industrious- they had lives and they smelt of sweat because they worked hard- not because they couldn't wash their clothes. More importantly she saw Faunus and Humans working together. She saw prosperity- she saw the vision she wanted to see come true right in front of her eyes.

She saw her dream, and she knew that Adam was about to tear it apart with his bloody red sword.

She saw all of this, and then when the orders came, she put on her mask and held down the trigger.

She could still hear gunfire in the streets not too far off, sporadic resistance, the people of Sodomah were fighters; putting them down was a bitch and a half. It didn't help that half of the Watchmen were Faunus- working alongside their human counterparts. Filling them with rounds was like trampling over her dream twice over. She half wished that she could just pause and switch teams like in a video game.

She took a long last drag of her cig' and snuffed it out on the barrel of her gun before letting it fall to the pavement, she pulled her mask back down. She was really starting to hate the mask, she really, really was. She pulled the old mag her gun, fed a new one into it and headed up the street; her next assignment was the rail-station, she hefted the satchel bags slung over her shoulder.

She saw her people when she got to the station. They had already set to work without her, fitting charges to the cargo trams and warming up the engines. When the charges were set, Sylys and her men would wait for Adam and his lackeys to finish up with the water plant and join them. They'd get on the trams and ride them to the midway stations and dismount. After that, they'd send the trains to the end of the line up north and set the charges off remotely. Then all that was left was to wait for the boats to pick them up along the shore. With the infrastructure of Sodomah crippled, anything or anyone they overlooked during the smash-and-grab would die in due time. This place would soon be just another ghost town.

How many people did she kill today? How many people was she about to kill? How many more did she need to put in a shallow grave?

Too many, and not enough.

"Almost done here, boss." She nodded as she strolled into the station, her soldiers stepping aside to let her through. They were loyal to a fault, perhaps too loyal. It was her fault that they were a product of her success- willingly going into hell with her, thinking that she would bring them victory. She hadn't failed to deliver yet.

She hooked her satchel onto one of the railcars fuel containers. "The charges set on this side?" She asked.

"Almost done, we've got a few more to place. Also, Boss?"

She nodded but didn't stop from clambering onto one of the rail cars.

"Word from our comrades up north, they say that the Watchmen are standing down."

"Let Adam know. He's the commander." She already knew what his response would be.

"We've been trying to relay the message to him but we can't get through. You're second in command."

That gave her pause. She thought for a moment, her fingers tapping against the rail. More graves to dig. "Put them all down, make it quick." She waited for her second to respond. When they said nothing in return, Seras glanced back to her soldiers as she climbed onto one of the trams. "Something the matter?"

She saw what it was right away. Curled horns, orange hair; blade like ruby, he'd be more intimidating if he didn't look like shit.

"Sir," She snapped, her soldiers backed away. Nothing good came from dealing with the Devil.

He must've run into hunters. He was beat up, smashed to pieces, clothes all torn, mask cracked, he lost his sheath and his sword was broken in places. Seras was still unable to feel pity for this man, she didn't know if it was possible. "We're almost done here, sir." She said placidly enough.

"Get the trains moving to the extraction point." She's heard him speak before. Controlled, calm, a voice that was ready to flip into an unmuted anger at a moments notice. She's never heard him like this before. Exhausted. Uncertain.

Afraid.

"Sir, there's a situation up north."

"That doesn't matter, get the trains moving. We're scrapping this operation." He pushed past one of her men, the soldier made no effort to stop him. Seras did.

"What?" she snapped,

He rounded on her; his blade was shaking- like he was trying to keep it from rising up. His left arm was limp- blood, lots of it. "It's the Grimm- we're leaving."

"What?" She snapped. "How'd they get in?" For a moment she pondered if the Watch had opened the gates, tried to deny the White Fang the city as a last resort.

"Plans change- the Grimm can take care of the rest, we're done here."

"Where are the others? What about the munitions, the supplies, is the treatment plant destroyed?" She was drawing a fine line stepping in front of Adam, blocking him from reaching the engine. He stiffened, seemed ready to draw on her.

"That's not important right now." He bit out the words; blood flecked her mask as he spoke. "A Grimm creature made a mess of our comrades and probably killed them all. The battle is over."

"Just one?"

"Does it matter if it's one or one hundred?" He was close to shouting- he glanced over his shoulder back the way he came. "We have to leave now."

"There are still people up in the north- Watchmen and militia, they haven't been able to subdue them- we're about to go up and support them." Something was forming in her mind. A plan. "We can't just leave them up there."

"We can, and we will." Adam pushed past her- or tried to. He must've used what was left of his strength just to get here.

What was it that he'd been running from?

"Move or die."

She's been waiting for a chance like this. She's been waiting for a damn long time.

"Nah,"

The bullet bit through his leg, punching through the thigh, her kick knocked him off the tram and onto the platform. She didn't play to chance- she put another round into his other leg- this one just above the knee.

She could feel the tension in her troops. It was like a string she could break with a single touch. She wasn't surprised. She did just put two rounds into Adam Taurus. It felt pure. It felt right.

"Stop gawking and get moving. Everyone mount up." Her voice got them moving again; they were her soldiers after all, she brought them this far, they were stuck with her. She hadn't done wrong by them until now. She just needed their trust in her to last a little longer.

She holstered her pistol, she even spun it like a gunslinger before slotting it home; it never felt so light in her hands- never had felt so right for it to be there. She stared down at the Crimson Devil, she must've hit his femoral, he was bleeding badly, a red fountain between his fingers. He was staring up at her through that mask she hated so much. She pulled hers off, tossed it to the floor. "Sorry to do this to you sir." She wasn't really, the last of her men climbed onto the trams. "Plans change."

"You will not get away with this." That eerie calm came back to his voice. "You don't leave the White Fang and get to live."

She glanced out past the station. Something moved, something with many limbs and yellow eyes. "I never said I was leaving." She backed away from the rails. "Get this thing moving, and get rid of those fucking bombs. We've got work to do up north."

She had found a new answer to one of her questions. 'How many more people do I need to kill?'

Just one more.

...

 **Did you know that Absaraviolo Vect frequents several imperial strip clubs in segmentum tempestus under the guise of a sister of battle? He knows how to move dem hips on that polio pole lemme tell you what.**


	5. The Apex V

**When I was a kid I saw Sonic and I was immediately scared because Me and only Me noticed that that blue fucker only has one fucking disgustingly mishapen eye. He has no Nose Bridge but he can somehow blink. He's a fucking chaos Daemon I'm telling you, you have to belive me he's going to kill us al-**

...

At the center of the dry and insidious heart of Vacuos' wastelands there is Shade Academy. It is one of the four great academies of Remnant- prestigious in name and creed. It is responsible for churning out the next generation of Hunters- sworn defenders of their rusting kingdom of sand and shame. Shade Academy is ancient and powerful. From across the four kingdoms its name was known- its Hunters were some of the most fierce, capable, and rugged to have taken up the mantle of a slayer of Grimm. Molded by both the harsh landscape they were born in, but refined by the careful hands of the headmasters- changed into something else entirely- refined into an elite warrior capable of enduring the harshest elements that the wastelands of Vacuo could throw at them- endure them, and strive past to reap a toll among the Grimm.

Vacuo offered the only true protection to the innocents of Vacuo. Its shielding wake forced back the Grimm in ways that the other smaller academies could not. They had the resources, the manpower, the training and expertise. A great many renowned Hunters had their start at Shade Academy, venturing onwards into the wastes as proven warriors before their first mission even. For the regimental training of Shade Academy is harsh and unforgiving- it is not enough to pass- one must also survive.

These hallowed grounds of brick and mortar and sandstone, they are no longer what they once were in these dark and malicious times.

It used to be something incredible. It used to be a place of chances and learning. It used to reign in Vacuo as a prize gem example for all the poor and desperate places of the sand stripped hell that was the eastern Kingdom. Few things mattered in the wasteland regions; survival was the one king that bowed to the even higher authority that was Shade Academy. From its steps did order remain despite all of remnant wanting it dead. From its doors did the next saviors come and go. They guarded caravans so that distant communities may be nourished and resupplied with building materials and water. They enforced the law of the land on the rogue bandit groups that preyed on the weak and innocent. They eliminated roving groups of desert adapted Grimm- keeping their populations low and in control- as well as monitoring their movements. They brought a strangled sense of normalcy to a land where to falter for even a moment is to die by the hand of the earth.

In Vacuo- independence is a fiercely guarded virtue. To live under the yolk of another is a fate that death is preferable to. Yet still, the people of the sands let themselves be ruled by the tender ministrations of Shade Academy- for there was no other option. To dismiss them- to reject them- was to be left out in the cold. It is to be forgotten about and torn to pieces by the Grimm beasts that waited for such foolish adversity to arise.

In a ways the People of Vacuo traded one Tyrant for another more seemingly benign dictator. The headmasters were the real power in Vacuo, their hunters accepted their missions, their bounties. While anyone could request a Hunter, the mission did not go through until there was headmaster approval. In this way, the headmasters controlled the movements of their students and graduates.

Towns and cities curried favor to Shade, shipments and bribes, leisurely pleasures that few if any in Vacuo could afford. Ornate fountains of purified water, clothes spun from rare forest creatures in the Far East, even cutlery carved from the bone-plates of Death Stalker Grimm. These items of opulence were bequeathed unto the Headmasters of Shade Academy so that a single Hunter may visit their unfortunate homesteads. The Students reaped the rewards as well- to them, the academy became home. Under its roof, there was no shortage of water and food as distant towns shipped what they could afford in order to have the protection of Hunters, power was plentiful, and they had no need to worry at night- the claws of Grimm could not reach them there. In turn for this comfort, they risked their lives willingly.

Then, the CCT in Vale Fell.

No more message boards, no more shipments of food and water, no more Shade Academy.

That security they risked their lives for, was no longer there.

Hunters at the academy who hailed from the distant borderland communities left Shade overnight, making the perilous journey overland to go back to their homes, to protect their friends and families from rampaging Grimm that were called by the combined despair of an entire kingdom suddenly lost in the long dark. Headmasters tried to reign in control, they tried to establish some form of communication with the outside communities, they tried to call the outside world for help- nothing came through, and nothing made sense anymore. Shipments, food and water, they stopped arriving- or they became more sporadic as the days passed by.

All the while, Sodomah rose in power. The port city that no one thought would amount to anything made its grab for supremacy among the sands. They made their presence- and their intentions- known.

It began with armored caravans nearly hundreds of vehicles strong. Dune buggies and tracked crawlers freighting gallons upon gallons of water and food crept through the hell-sands of the wasteland. Night was awash with fire as caravan guards fended off savage Grimm beasts with mounted heavy machine guns- high caliber rounds smashed through chitin armor at range, cannons blasted apart backs of Grimm and port-watch soldiers fended off those that closed to the tracks of the Crawlers- trying to climb aboard- shotguns and flame-throwers sent them back down.

These armored caravans were archaic things used in darker times by the first dynasty of Vacuo. The tyrants would collect tribute from distant communities, hauling them back to their keeps aboard heavily armored tracked crawlers with heavy steel hulls, protected by flocks of fast moving scout vehicles and eight-wheeled land-fortresses. These ancient things were abandoned and left forgotten in warehouses spread about Vacuo. Hunters kept the wastelands clear of Grimm, no longer were such Caravans needed. The day the CCT fell, was the day that the aspiring men and women of Port Sodomah opened ancient warehouses, toolboxes, welders, hammers and forges were carted in behind them, and then the doors shut.

A fortnight past, and the Watchmen of Port Sodomah forged through the dusty sands of the wastelands on revitalized behemoths and brought, water, metal, weapons, food, and medicine to those who fought to survive. This single act of charity ensured that not only would there be those who owed Sodomah a debt- one that Sodomah would undoubtedly call upon in in the future- there would also be a plethora of customers in search of a safe way to transport materials and people across Vacuo. Perhaps more importantly then that, it showed Vacuo who they could now rely upon, who was in power.

It changed in a single moment- it changed when the first plastic bottle of filtered water passed the parched lips of a Shade Academy student that was when the balance of power changed in Vacuo forever. It changed, because in Vacuo, loyalty only went so far as you could provide for someone.

Not every Student in Shade Academy is a prodigy sent there by lofty parents in positions of sedate power. Most are vagabonds, fortune seekers, orphans who lost everything. They only went to the Academy because it was a place where they could ply there hard earned survival traits in exchange for bed and a meal. They had no true loyalty to the people there; they had no commitments, no ties to bind them down- they were children looking for shelter and stability. Shade was the corner stone of Vacuo- now it is not. They have met those who now hold power, those who can offer them what Shade can no longer provide.

…

"You… You can't!" He was actually starting to cry, his already puffy eyes red and swollen from the constant dust storms, began to water at the corners. "You can't just leave!" Harriet sighed, dragging her claws down the side of her face- feeling them furrow through the fine layer of dirt and grime that had accumulated over the course of the past weeks.

Her ears twitched in aggravation, her teeth ached and she stank like nothing else, her sensitive Faunus nose was beginning to run because of it. This first-year punk was really grating on her. She glanced back at the rest of her Team. Linda, Daphne and Yeager all shared similar expressions, Yeager in particular looked about ready to just put a javelin through this boys face.

"Alright, listen kid," Harriet snapped, cutting the first year students' quibbling off. "We're leaving whether you like it or not- we've had it up to here with this bullshit rationing, and bullshit academy. Shades' over, had a good run, but it's gone now," She snapped, the boy winced at her abrasive attitude. "Here's how it's gonna work out. We're gonna leave this shit-heap, we're gonna truck on over to Sodomah- they got some really nice deets' over there from what I'm hearing." They already had everything the needed for the trip too- they were on the front steps of Shade academy, the temple-like school was in the harsh and obscuring grips of a raking storm of sand. Harriet contemplated for a moment the ramifications of their leaving- Team Holiday were one of the best teams at Shade academy, in fact, after Krakan, Hornet, Danger, Timbre and Zodiac left, Holiday was the _only_ team.

The only ones left aside from several teachers and faculty, were students- pathetic students at that. It was no wonder that Vacuo got whipped during the Tournament. It may have also been in part due to Vales Team, Ruby, she thinks they were called, a bunch of hard-ass cunts, they were. If this all blew over, and Shade was still standing, the survivors would be tough as nails. The next tournament would be Vacuos for the taking. It was a happy thought that didn't suit the situation. Some crying wussy first year and an unrelenting sandstorm that was libel to tear Shade academy apart, already the campus was deteriorating, lack of repairs and general dilapidation from misuse made it so that everything was falling apart in the harsh environment of Vacuos Desert.

 _'_ _What was once wrought by mankind will be returned to the sands of times constructs.'_ Harriet quoted; it was something that Daphne said in one of her rare social moments.

"We'll die without you!" The first year blurted, the sand was really picking up now; the wind was ripping words away from their conversation. "The Grimm will-"

"You're starting to piss me off, kid." Harriet snapped. "You keep forgetting that I no longer give two fucks about this shit heap." Her lip curled up into a sneer. "This place can rot, Team Holidays' got a future, we aint' going to see that future grow if we stay here." Linda nodded in confirmation. Hell, it was her idea in the first place.

The kid shouted back at them, he was going on about something like honor and duty. Espousing morals like they meant anything in this day and age, he sounded like he believed it too, the shmuck.

"Lets get going, lads," Harriet waved for her team to fall in. They pulled the scarfs up over their mouths, trying to keep the oncoming sandstorm from ripping them to shreds- their heavy clothing and backpack rustled. "We've got ground to cover before the sun goes down. Onwards to Sodomah."

…

The sun rose over Sodomah. Bright and golden, light arrested the darkness, and illuminated a broken city.

Carnage filled the streets,

Sodomah was in pieces.

It would survive. She had to believe- had to make it so- that it would survive, or her gamble would just wind up being a death sentence. Seras Kyuli sat at the desk, staring down at the charts and maps and frustratingly obscure details listed before her. They were manifests and cargo logs of the storage facilities in the northern end of Sodomah- the only part that wasn't in tatters- thanks in part to the discretion of the soldiers under her command.

The North end was reasonably well-supplied, purified water and food stores, as well as a large motor pool by the north gates with an abundance of oil. They would be of much use to her plans. An entire part of Sodomah had been completely unmolested by the White Fangs assault, and she was in control of it. There was an unfortunate sting to that stroke of fortune, that sting was the twenty-six thousand, eight hundred civilians.

Nearly a quarter of them were Watchmen who had surrendered or were captured. A whole third of those civilians were Faunus, her people, the ones she was fighting for. She had hoped that her and her men would be able to curry their favor, but none of them seemed appreciative of the White-Fang 'Liberating' them. It didn't surprise her.

It probably had something to do with the south half of Sodomah currently being overrun with Grimm, and filled with the desiccated husks of their dead friends and family.

It had been nearly a week since Seras and her men arrived, skipping off the railcars and marching to the Northern Watch-Station like it was some form of victory parade. Civilians lined the streets; eyes wide and fearful, disarmed watchmen hung their heads in shame. The flag of the white fang flew above the north quarter, proud and fierce.

"Any trouble from the locals?" She asked, she leaned over her desk and grabbed a slim stack of manila envelopes and sorted several of the manifests into them. She put the envelopes into a respective pile; she'd have need of them later.

"Just the usual harassment, nothing violent -yet." One of her adjutants- a man she'd known for years that went by the name of Kiro. It wasn't his real name, he never told it to anyone- even her.

"What about our men? Any trouble from them?"

"You should no better than to think that they would question your orders- or your threats." She knew that as well, but she was now running an occupation. This was _her_ city, her chance to make a dream only imagined come to life. She wouldn't have it ruined by racial bigotry on the part of her soldiers. She made it clear that any looting, assault, rape, murder, harassment and misconduct against the civilian population would be met with public execution.

So far, she'd only had to slit the throats of three of her men. They had always been a bit more radical than what she would have liked. It must've worked, there had been no further incidents, and she hoped that such a display proved some level of accountability to the civilians- that this wasn't some sort of dictatorship.

"What about the partition?" She was referring to the scrap-heap wall closing off the north quarter from the rest of Sodomah. It was manned by the majority of her soldiers- their duty was to watch for any Grimm coming up the rails.

"We had several more tries from Grimm last night. Death Stalkers, per usual. There were less of them than from before."

"Odd." She commented. "How are we doing for water?"

"Same as yesterday- we have more than enough."

"That's not enough."

"You said the same thing yesterday." Krio noted. "And the day before that."

"We're in a desert." Her argument was always blunt. "There can never be enough water. There was a purification plant in the South quarter. We need to secure it."

"We don't have the manpower for such an operation. There could be any number of Grimm crawling around down there."

Seras pushed papers off of the map she was using. Taking a pen she outlined the fairly large area of Sodomah that they now occupied. She drew a line signifying the partition, and outlined the railway that led through it- it was the same one they arrived on. The rails led to the upper south quarter, several blocks away is the water purification plant. It took in seawater, and slowly converted it into drinkable fresh water. It was the beating heart of Sodomah.

"All it would take is a small team to ride down and set up an outpost in the station. We could make runs from the plant and back; bring several drums with us each time and siphon off as much water as we can. Grimm will never know we were there."

Kiro pointed out the vast open area between the plant and the station. "Anyone running through that zone would be in the open and without cover. A Death Stalker would make mincemeat out of them- only a Hunter can outrun a Grimm." He looked up to Seras. "It can't be done."

"Yet." She was quick to add, her eyes focused on the 2D water plant. "Have the civilians bothered talking to us?" She asked.

Kiro shook his head. "Not anything major, you shouldn't trouble yourself with it."

"Humor me."

"Fishermen and Caravans keep asking to go out, been like that since we got here." He shrugs. "We tell the fishers to just cast off the docks, the Caravans we can't do anything for."

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" Seras hissed; her tail slammed the floor as she glares daggers at Kiro. He instinctively takes a step back; to anger the Lieutenant was to risk execution. "I thought I made it clear that I want every complaint, no matter how small or seemingly ridiculous brought to my attention."

"Ma'am, they're asking to leave the city- they could be trying to start a resistance movement."

"Funny, I thought _we_ ' _re_ the resistance." She sniffed, "Have any off duty personnel assist them."

"Ma'am?"

"I must've not made myself clear- I said to help them with their jobs." She didn't mean to snap- but she felt like she was the only one looking at the bigger picture. "If we help them- it means we can gain their trust, if we gain their trust, we don't have to spend so much time watching over their shoulder- we become part of their lives- part of their routine."

She could always tell when something she said didn't sit well with one of her men- it was how they were silent, how their lips grew taut and back straightened. "Is there something you would like to say?"

"No, ma'am." Kiro said, clipped and curt. "I'll let everyone know."

"Make sure that you do." He left the office, door shutting behind him. She was alone again; the pale yellow-white walls of former Wardens office were blank and unadorned with any pictures or shelves. The only fixture to them was the window overlooking the Northern Quarter. The blinds were drawn; she always had them that way. Part of her thought that if she were to ever look out of them, that the Northern Quarter would disappear, and that she would wake up from whatever dream this was.

She walked over to the window and pushed the blinds to the side. The gunmetal grey and silvery white buildings and docks of the Northern Quarter called up to her from below and beyond. She could see shapes moving with purpose in the streets below- human shapes, humans and Faunus alike. They hawked wares from market stalls, pushed open doors into buildings, pulled handcarts through the streets, argued with each other and bickered endlessly over prices.

She pulled off her mask for what felt like the first time in years. She felt tired, old and decrepit. Yet, she felt like she could do anything. That there was nothing that could stand in her way now with her goal in sight- so patronizingly close- she could _do this_. She could _make this work._ It had been bloody, cruel and devastating, the path she had walked, but now on a silver platter before her was a city under her control- a city she could mold into something great, something that could change the world. Humans and Faunus, working together, even more, she could redeem the name of the White Fang- no matter how slightly. They didn't have to rule through fear.

She ran a hand down her face, the skin and scales intermingling together like diamond shaped stones on sand. It wasn't going to be easy, but nothing worth doing in life ever was. She had to earn their trust, had to make it so that working with her and her soldiers as the best and most attractive option. Had to make it known that the White Fang was here, and they were here to stay. Even more importantly, she had to make it as bloodless as possible. Those days were over.

She closed the blinds, and set her mask down on her desk amongst the maps and papers. She was smiling- she was looking forwards to this challenge, a challenge that didn't need to involve violence as much as it did coercion, tact and ample amounts of goodwill and generosity. It was almost like the old days when the flag wasn't so stained in blood and ash.

She wasn't willing to count her eggs just yet, but she honestly believed that this could work, that this could set an example to the rest of the White Fang once the CCT's went back online- or if something else came along and replaced them. Sodomah would be the proof that she needed, that the days of violence were at an end- that fear and anger weren't effective in the long term. That in order to make a change you had to make a stand- and you had to be obstinate. You had to get in their face, make it known that you weren't going to be pushed around, and that you weren't going to leave- but you weren't going to hurt people, you weren't going to stoop to that level.

She just had to play her cards exactly right.

…

 **ThiS MAkes My TinY Weinis InTo ThE SUPreME PenIS**


	6. The Apex VI

**I Have Achieved My Final Form And Have Re-Written The Ending Scene So As To Appear Less Autistic Than I Actually Am Are Is.**

...

Monsters are Real. This is something that Remnant has known for quite some time, however. The Grimm- monsters made manifest- nightmare fiends that stalk the darker places of the mind, waiting to strike when their prey is most unawares. They haunt the wilds, they haunt the cities, they haunt the skies and they haunt even dreams.

They are the bedtime myth to scold naughty children, they are the monster in the closet, the shadow just out of line of sight, the creaking under the bed, and the cold wind outside the window- scratching at the glass. They have but one fatal flaw, that keeps terror yet at arms length.

They can be fought, they can be killed, they are corporeal, and they have limits.

The Grimm, they are not _'Monsters'._

A Monster is The Shadow just behind the curtain, The Sound that you may have just imagined, The Shifted pot in the yard, The Sense of dread creeping down your spine whenever you walk into a room, the casual glance over the shoulder when walking alone on a moonless night.

A Monster is unseen, a monster is unprecedented, it is not manifested by its own will; it is a creature that is birthed from the minds of young children and tired adults. It is shaped by story, by rumor, by speculation and discontent. It needs not act in order to cause terror, for the everyday failings of an overstressed populace are what give it its strength. It is a scapegoat and martyr; a terror that has not acted for it is not wholly real.

It is a nightmare that the mind shapes through the whims of the subconscious, and the malevolence of an imagination left to its own devices.

That is a Monster, and its greatest weapon is the imagination of its victims

There is one difference, however, that separates a monster that is real, from one that is fiction, and that is a lair.

The Sewers; an interlacing network of pipes and channels, frayed wires, broken bottles, spent needles and corroding trash. Plastic bags and waxy containers clog inflow grates. It smells of putrid stagnation, it's paths run deep, sections built upon sections in order to accommodate the needs of a growing city-state. They dug deep at first, until they ran out of room, then they built more and more shallow, until the rails skirted over the surface.

These old, decayed realms, the foundation of the city, built of steel and iron, they were the perfect nesting grounds.

The Broodlord stalked into an alcove, a cistern, the air was damp, the mold was plentiful, sewer dwelling insects crawled aimlessly through shallow pools of detritus and standing water. There was a single hanging outlet at the center top of the cistern, its bulb was broken, and the cable left swinging- robbed or vandalized eons ago.

It was secluded, hidden, away from any possibility of prying eyes. There was minimal threat of the beasts that roamed the streets above from venturing below, and if they even did so, they would run the risk of losing themselves in the endless maze of tunnels, no psychic precognition to aid them. Even those that ventured low would likely only remain close to the surface levels, the confines further below safe from perdition.

It soaked in the details- every wretched one, ever corner and crack. This would become its home for the evident future. Now, that it had its nest- its home, it required what all genestealers needed- hosts. A cult. It needed to Breed.

Yet, even before that, it needed to heal. It needed to rest. The desert had tested it, and the endless trekking even before that. It was by all accounts exhausted, running on the last vestiges of strength it possessed. Cuts, rents, gouges and cracks made a mess of its carapace, but It's stomach was full, filled with the fresh gore of non-human and human alike from the slaughter-fest from above. This would go to healing its body- so tired and wounded. In a days time- perhaps even less- it would be on the hunt once again.

It leaned back, against the alcove wall, hunching over and curling its arms around itself. It's yellow eyes slitted shut as it began to enter the hibernatory state that was accustomed to all Tyranids that spearhead the vanguard. It did not dream- dreams were unknown to it. Instead, it remembered. It recalled the endless miles trod underfoot, left foot and then right before left again. The crunching sand and beating heat. The endless waves of bone plated beasts that seemed as inescapable as the air it breathed. They were everywhere and they were vicious- clawing at its hide with a ferocity that bordered on obsession.

The Broodlord had broken them- any and all that had crossed its path were subjected to the purity of physiology that was the Tyranid Broodlord.

Then, had come the city that it now lurked beneath. A crucible of slaughter- the great gates had opened, and alarms screamed on every corner. The armored beasts skittered in, and the Broodlord had followed. Gunfire and blood- its claws ripped into flesh and out through metal. Had their been a brood at its back, it might have even succeeded in bringing ruin to the entirety of the city and not just one smidgen of its overall whole.

Such plans- such plots- would be made for the future, as it was a thinking beast, a creature of vast intellect hidden under layers of armored carapace and rending claws.

This city would fall. Its vermin prey-hosts would be cleansed and subverted, and from their offspring would purestrains be pulled from. They would link minds, and form the psychic choir that would scream out into the void, and summon the hive fleets to devour this world.

Such was the way of things.

Such was the way of the Tyranid.

…

Harriet had a way with words, especially when it came to descriptions. She could always put the current situation into a rather vulgar-yet-apt perspective when she really unloaded her odium. The sun was one such thing; the 'giant-hate-ball-of-faggot-gas' had been the object of her scorn for nearly over a day now. Even when soaked in sweat and covered in sand, the heat did nothing to lessen the Captain of Team Holidays' rant. Her teammates had long since learned to ignore her rants, and now would have normally been no different.

It was the heat, the Grimm, and the hellish slog made it almost impossible for even the slightest incitement to be bearable in the conditions, and Harriets ranting was no exception. Traveling by night was hazardous, and sleeping during the day was nearly impossible from the heat, it only got worse as the day crept on into afternoon. It didn't make a difference, though.

Most people would have broken by now, the stress, the ranting, the heat and the rationed water; even a Hunter team would have difficulties. Team Holiday was more than just a veteran Hunter team- they were a veteran hunter team from Vacuo, and to be born in Vacuo is to grow up in adversity and discomfort. A little sand and sun wasn't going to break them- they weren't weak willed like those schmucks from the other Kingdoms- Especially Vale.

Vale.

Harriet scowled, wanting to spit. She hated Vale, it and its people were some of the most pathetic in the world. Every last one of them was a simpering idealist who had their heads in the clouds, unaware of the reality of the world around them. The worst of them were their hunters, a bunch of sycophants and do-gooders. Speaking of Vale, and Hunters, naturally lead her to the memory of the last Vytal festival.

This time, she really did spit.

Humiliating.

Disgraceful.

Unforgivable.

She had watched the event; in particular she had paid close attention to the team elimination match that pitted Vacuo against Vale. The beacon academy team- J-N-P-R went up against Vacuos own B-R-N-Z. It had been called one of the best matches in the history of the Vytal festival, and it ended up with Vale taking the win.

Harriet had been apoplectic with rage. It had been a fucking joke; Bronze could have done away with the formality and just have called it quits- that would have been less demeaning than watching that whole shit-show play out like it did. The only saving grace was the sudden invasion of the White Fang and the Grimm, the city had been ransacked and casualties were estimated to be in the triple digits. It was nearly enough to cheer Harriet up. Hell, maybe such an attack would even give those damn Vale brats some backbone.

Backbone, guts, endurance, it was a trait that everyone except Holiday seemed to be lacking these days.

She glanced back at her team. Behind her was Linda, their close in specialist and one of the best 'Whip Hips' Harriet had the pleasure of working with. Her figure was compact and hard, almost Amazonian. Harriet could rarely recall a time where she didn't see her outside of the gym.

Then there was Daphne, also known as 'Radar' in some cases, the girl didn't talk much but it didn't matter. She was also a Faunus like Linda and Harriet, but unlike them she was a rare breed; furred, luxurious antenna waved and swiveled on her head. It was because of this that she was the teams' pointman- and she was a damned good one.

Lastly there was Yeager, the only human in Team Holiday. He was a bitter son of a bitch who carried a chip on his shoulder wherever he went. He was also the teams' primary ranged support; Linda and Daphne, along with Harriet herself being focused on close to mid range combat.

She'd been together with these three individuals since their days as raw students, the fact that her team was nothing but founding members was rare enough, but that they were all full fledged veteran hunters was almost unheard of. It was true however, and they had the battle scars to prove it. Daphne was missing several ribs, Yeager had a prosthetic left hand, Linda was missing several teeth and her tail had to be regrown several times, Harriet herself had her left kidney torn out, a few fingers bitten off and several feet of intestines shredded. These were just minor wounds to team Holiday- they were the most noticeable, from Daphne's surgical scars that never healed to Linda's paler scales on her tail- to Yeager's hand and Harriet's fingers. This did nothing to account for the list of broken bones, scars, and lacerations that they had all accrued. Being a Veteran earned them respect at the price of their own flesh and bone.

Harriet had watched the kids that went into the academies thinking that being a Hunter was going to be fun. They signed up with only the thoughts of being a hero, being a monster slayer and some sort of savior to their friends and family. They never realize the truth about it: That hero's die, champions are killed, and legends fade into dust.

The smarter ones, and the fighters, they learn this eventually. Usually when their guts are falling out of their chest as a Boarbatusk gores them or when an Ursa rips them limb from limb. The Academies never tell them these sorts of things. Why would they? Remnant is at war with the Grimm. It is a war that will never end until humans and Faunus are wiped off the map. The inevitable can only be delayed, not stopped. For this war to continue, for the end to be held at bay, bodies are needed. Children are recruited, lured in or outright stolen. They are filled with false hope and launched at the nearest pack of Ursa and are torn to bits. Sometimes one or two survive and they are treated as heroes'- only to be sent straight back out, again and again, until they die.

Harriet had seen it happen plenty enough times before, there was even one point where she believed all that crap the headmaster was spewing. She learned the truth the hard way. It was pounded into her by the meaty fists of a berengal that left her with the lopsided grin and false teeth, it was stitched into her head with catgut thread by a surgeon and it ran through her veins along with the synthetic plasma for all the blood she lost.

It would be easy to say that in retrospect, being a Hunter was a shitty, unfulfilling line of work that had you put your life on the line for little to no reward, despite it being one of the most important duties in Remnant. It payed like shit and there were almost no benefits. People looked up to you for inspiration of course, but that feeling of pride got old very quickly. It all begged the question then, as to why one stayed a Hunter. For Harriet, the answer was simple- She stayed on for the sheer fucking thrill of it.

The feeling of dominating something that's supposed to be stronger than you, making it squeal and bleed- it was intoxicating. It was like a drug, that feeling. Like any drug, of course, it needed to be taken in moderation. For the rest of her team- she didn't know why they stayed on. They each had their own reasons, she supposed. Most Hunters became Hunters so as to escape poverty, or were orphans who the academies took in from overflowing foster homes. These were the Real Hunters, the destitute and impoverished, the gutter dogs, the runaway slaves, societies living failures and back-alley thugs. These were the people that remnant needed the most, because it was these people who knew how to Kill and Survive.

To Fight the Grimm it took a fuck lot more than some pretty guns and Aura, it took Grit. It took Pain. It took all the nasty little things that morality and decency stripped away from decent hearted folk. To fight the Grimm you needed to become a kind of monster in your own right or else the world would swallow you whole.

Those other hunters? The ones that preached all that love and happy shit? The ones that became Hunters to impress mommy and daddy, the ones who joined up to 'fight the grimm' and 'for a noble cause' and all of that hero shit? The Hunters that thought that they could 'help and protect everyone?'

They would be the first to die. They were the first to break down. They were the ones who the rest of the team secretly hated, wishing them ill will for all the bullshit missions they got dragged into. Harriet remembered that little shit back at Shade, who had begged them to stay. He was just one of those countless other high-horse ridding snobs that lorded their superiority over everyone else, preaching equality and good will.

Harriet couldn't stand shit like that.

She was a Faunus, and she got no end of persecution because of it, but unlike the other Faunus- she fought back. She bloodied noses, bruised ribs and broke arms. She didn't take any shit, and she got away with it because she was the best god damned hunter in Vacuo, and she made sure that everyone knew it.

In all honesty She thought the hatred against the Faunus was a good thing. It weeded out the weak ones among them and made sure that only the meanest motherfuckers remained. It would be those assholes that could carry the day and bring victory when defeat seemed to inevitable. The Grimm fed off of fear; it stood to reason that if you did not fear them, than they would hold no power of you.

The sun was dipping lower in the sky. Beginning its descent into the night so that familiar shattered moon may rise. The heat didn't lessen, it may not have been actively beating down upon them, but now it also radiated upwards from the sand and the wind carried dust and grit with every gust. Holiday had to cover their faces with bandanas and put on goggles just so as to see and breath. It was a small sandstorm, nothing too serious for a Hunter team like them, but for any outsider it could just as well be lethal and disorienting.

"Are we gonna hunker down and wait for this to pass?" Yeager shouted over the screaming of the wind. Harriet glanced back and shook her head, pointing forwards, despite the worsening visibility, as they crested over another dune, the faint outline of tall, black walls against the skyline could be seen. They were nearly at the gates.

As the wind picked up and day began to turn to dusk it took them another thirty solid minutes of trudging through sand before they reached the foot of the great walls of Sodoma. The walls themselves provided relative shelter to the Hunters, the setting sun not so intense in the shadow of the walls. It gave the Hunter team the opportunity they needed to collect themselves.

"So, which way's the nearest gate?" Linda shouted. Yeager looked back along the walls expanse before replying. "Not sure,"

"Guess we'll just have to pick a direction and hope we get lucky." Harriet said, she walked a few paces before she picked up on the absence of one set of feet. She looked back, regarding Daphne. "Something up, Daphne?"

Daphne nodded, she was looking directly at the all, almost looking through it.

"Mind' sharing with the rest of the class?" Yeager spoke up. "C'mon, speak up, D, you know I don't like it when you get like this."

"Quiet." Daphne said. "The City. Way too quiet. All the right sounds are gone." She shrugged again. "Bad omen."

It took a few seconds to translate, but Harriet had been around Daphne long enough to pick out what mattered from her strange way of phrasing. It had something to do with her extrasensory capabilities, she saw and heard and felt things differently from any of them. "You can't hear anyone?"

"Yes." Daphne nodded, then she shook her head. "No." Eventually she looked to Harriet, a grimace on her face, trying to figure out how to phrase what she was feeling. "Bad-sounds."

"What, you mean like the Grimm?" Yeager asked, hand moving for his weapon, it was an almost subconscious action.

Harriet motioned for her team to fall in, this could wait for a moment, at least it could wait until they were at the gates. "Just keep your heads on and lets keep moving for the gate."

It was another fifteen minutes, every second of which Daphne kept her antenna perked, the frond like organs vibrating softly as she listened through the air, picking up on details that any other person or Faunus would have missed entirely. For her, this wasn't listening so much as it was seeing, hearing, and feeling blended together to form a 3D mental image in real time. There was nothing that could hide from this omnipresent sight she possessed, she had no blindspots, and through that, neither did team Holiday. Harriet was well aware that Daphne was without a doubt, the most powerful weapon that was at their disposal.

She was also the most unsettling.

"Ahead," Daphne spoke, her tone immediately putting the team on edge with its hint of alarm. They saw the reason for her concern clearly enough- the massive gaping hole in the wall where a reinforced gate once was.

"Shit-shit," Harriet hissed, her ears flattening back as she tore up the sand with her boots, sprinting ahead and into the city, teeth bared and eyes furious. "Shit!" Her teammates were right behind her.

It was a scene that each of them had seen too many times. A spread of corpses, ripped to pieces and left out in the sun to bake. Old bloodstains washed over concrete and sand, shells littering the ground, and weapons dropped behind so as to run just a little bit faster- not that it mattered.

The bodies were several days old by this point- desiccated by the heat, nothing but skin and bones left for the carrion beasts to fight over. "Take a look at this." Linda hissed, turning a desiccated corpse over. It wasn't like any body she'd seen. "What do you think did this?" She asked. "It isn't like the usual."

She was of course referring to the Death Stalkers. They littered Vacuo like thieves ran Mistral. The giant armored scorpions were the main Grimm threat in Vacuo, and because of it, the Hunters of Vacuo have long since become accustomed to their tendencies, their M.O's especially. Death Stalkers were odd- they were almost clinical in their execution. They would immobilize their prey with their claws- crushing the torso, and then delivering a single killing strike to the head with their tail.

If it had been a Death Stalker that had been responsible for this massacre, then it was not like any that team Holiday had faced. The patterns were all wrong, the kills too inconsistent. The one that Linda stood over right now was the most glaring offence: what was once a person now had their head twisted 180-degrees and their arms ripped off or twisted into angles that surely meant they were broken. Other corpses has similar mauling's, along with brutal gouges torn through their body.

"By-The-Fucking-Maidens…" Yeager breathed, bile rising in his throat- he suppressed it with the ease that came from long practice. He was focused almost entirely on the gate, he ran his hand along its surface- feeling the deep rents in the metal. He was incredulous, and Harriet didn't blame him. There were all sorts of stories about cities and towns falling to the Grimm. Defenses overrun, walls smashed through, gates battered open, Harriet and the rest of her team could recount any number of reasons why or how a town fell to the grimm. Sadomah was not supposed to be one of those towns. Its defenses were always manned. It had high walls and thick steel entrances, flak guns aimed at the sky and turrets on every watchtower. It could handle a grimm invasion- it had handled them plenty of times before.

"We're in the southern most quarter, right?" Harriet asked and Linda nodded. "Maybe this is an isolated event? Maybe the other quarters are okay?" She was grasping at straws, she already could tell herself why that wasn't likely to be true. Your average guard could handle a Grimm beast well enough from range, given they had enough firepower to throw at it, but up close, only a Hunter could reliably take down one of those monsters. The carnage around them was testament to that fact, and Linda only drove home the final nails with what she said next.

"Then why didn't the port Watchmen respond and take this quarter back?" Linda replied, Harriet hissed again, expecting that answer. If this one gate had been incidentally breached then the Watchmen would have reclaimed it by now- she's heard the stories of those fuckers, jackboots and grim scowls, they didn't fuck around with the protection of their city. A grimm invasion, even if there was a breach, wouldn't have been able to overwhelm their interior defenses.

"Still worth checking out the other quarters," Harriet said, the street beneath her boots was tinted with dried blood and bone shards, Linda, Daphne, and Yeager spread out behind her, sliding into a simple tracking formation, eyes keen and wary of the possibilities of an ambush. The safest way to fight was to expect that a Grimm was around every corner and in every shadow.

For Hunters, Paranoia was an essential tool.

Hunters die quickly for the most part, their deaths are swift and brutal affairs. They kill quickly and are killed just so. These instances of death are spawned from the most minute of moments, a wrong turn, a misstep, a shot that goes wide by an inch too much, it is the smallest detail that kills a Hunter or at the very least opens a doorway to that death. So to be paranoid is good, in such stressful environments

Not every hunter had it- but most hunters did, because it is the ones who lack it that always die first. .

Team holiday sweeps down the entrance street, sand crunches underfoot against pavement. The gates loom closed behind them. Bodies lie in piling drifts of sand. Harriet spots it first, the body, the white and black mask with red highlights and streaks- not all of them blood- its presence slots in another piece of the puzzle. "White Fang," She snaps, stepping over the corpse she picks up the battered machine gun it had once held. She is more alert now than she was before. Grimm were one thing- they had to close to melee in order to kill you. Guns were an entirely different can of worms.

"Of fucking course." Yeager snaps, stepping over he kicks the body. It is stiff in rigor mortis and its armor is torn up. "Fucking assholes ruin everything!"

"Keep it down, fuck-face," Harriet is quick to reign in Yeager, "Get in formation and ready that fuck-off huge toothpick of yours, we're gonna need it."

Her team had various methods for fighting enemies at range; they had already been one of the few hunter teams with the guts to kill people- bandits and brigands in particular. She hadn't been a fan of that kind of wet-work, but it had to be done. Her weapon was named Melody- it was a Halberd; a long polearm with a wicked axe head curving back into a pick and tipped with a spear. Like all Hunter weapons it was multifunctional, retracting back into a compact assault rifle with little to no effort. It was honestly the least exotic of the teams armaments, Daphne had her shield- Taigan, the large circular disk of metal was trifunctional- hiding within was a powerful gravity dust generator, and along the rim, blades could protrude, turning the shield into a circular saw. Linda had her serrated blade whips- Glorie d'argent, the silver segmented links would lacerate enemies and rip muscle off of bone, and if something tried to run, the segments could detach and be reloaded, turning them into shrieking bolas that ruined limbs. Lastly there was Yeager and his Spear: Mango.

Everyone laughed at first, the simple rod of metal with a pointy end. Then it transformed. Mango was a work of mechanical genius. Tiny dust generators along the haft, interspaced and reinforced, along with a narrow strip of magnetic wiring coiling along the inside, turned Mango from a fighting spear into a kinetic-kill weapon of unprecedented power- a railgun. The speartip was the projectile, a heavy titanium alloy with stabilizing fins; he carried a whole pack of them on his hip.

Theirs was a lethal arsenal, a hunter's arsenal. But as with all things deadly, it is not how they are made but how they are used. Daphne took point, her shield bared; Harriet and Linda took center while Yeager brought up the rearguard. They made certain to progress at a steady pace, not wanting to linger among the corpses and the bloodstains. As they progressed further into Sodomah, the greater the carnage- Harriet could barely make out the differences between bodies- so mangled and rent they were- the long exposure to the sea breeze and desert heat drying out the skin and turning it into something like parchment. Daphne felt the air, her antenna bobbing up and down as she adjusted them like furred frequency interceptors trying for a signal lock. She was on a constant alert like the rest of them, with the added responsibility of being the teams' early warning system for any potential unseen threats.

Yeager was the first to break the silence, glancing quickly at the sun, high in the sky, beginning its descent only just now. "It's going to be dark soon, Stalker's will be moving by then."

"Noted." Harriet replied, tail, short and stubby, twitching pensively. She was beginning to wonder if leaving Shade was all that good of an idea, they had come to Sodomah thinking it to be the last safe haven in Vacuo. To find it in such a state as this- dead and desolate, it made her question the future of Vacuo as a whole- was this it? Was she living through the last few desperate days of a once great kingdom? It was hard to imagine it as anything but.

"Hey," Harriet stopped, gesturing across the street. "Lets take a breather." They slipped in through the broken window of a port side brewery. The insides of the pub were relatively pristine, a few bodies near the windows and behind the bar- riddled with bullets and eaten away by beetle-flies, aside from them, the bar was still mostly intact. Daphne hopped the counter, quick to pull two bottles of Amber Gold off the shelf and collect four glasses. Linda waved off the bottle, instead going for water. Yeager had no such scruples; he knocked his glass away, and slammed his canteen down onto the counter, cap off.

"So." Harriet began. "Wasn't expecting this." She took the bottle from Daphne, and poured herself a tall one. "Any thoughts?"

Daphne shook her head, already on her second glass. Yeager was even more talkative now with a drink in his system. "None come to mind. Shade's probably dead by now. Rookies could barely be a fight for another Stalker swarm."

"We could try to seal the breach," Linda suggested. "Or at least barricade it up, that might keep any more 'Stalkers from getting in."

"That might work for 'Stalkers, but whatever managed to tear through that slab of steel certainly wasn't a stalker." Yeager countered, shaking his head. He had his eyes on the outside street, pensively keeping watch.

"What makes you say that? Maybe it was the White fang who broke in the gate?" Linda snapped back.

"There's no way it could've been those masked fucks," Yeager shook his head violently now, "The damn things was pulled off its damn hinges nearly, and I mean _Pulled_ , a bomb doesn't work that way."

"How should we go about looking for survivors?" Harriet interjected, she could see an argument brewing and it was the exact thing she didn't need right now. "Maybe we can gather some people up and figure out what happened, and then play it by ear from there."

"C'mon Boss," Yeager cracks a pained grin. "If there's a grimm that could've torn through the gates and the white fang, what makes you think that there could be survivors?"

"Easy." Daphne said, grabbing the teams attention. "If someone wants to survive, and is willing to pay the price to do so, it can be surprisingly easy to hide from the Grimm." It was another one of Daphne's damned cryptic answers. Layered with overtones of personal experience that no amount of prodding will get her to answer to.

"I'm still having trouble believing this." Linda sighed. "Came all this way, and for what?"

"It could've been a hell of a lot worse, Lindy," Harriet said, she raised her glass, "Least we found something to drink."

It took a certain sort of tenacity to still hold onto hope after all that has befallen them; it would not be unexpected for most to be distraught by the turn of events. Holidays' city of gold in ruins, their dreams of a new life torn apart, most would have given into despair. But these were hunters of Vacuo. Suffering and life go hand in hand for them. They knew to take stock of what they had and still press on. Right now, they had Drinks and amber spirits. That was enough for them.

...

It was later in the day when they started to move again. They had decided to roll the dice and move northbound, hoping that it was just the south gate that had been breached, that some semblance of civilization was still in Sodomah further north. There is a sort of silence that comes with a dead city. It isn't like one who has not experienced it expects. It is not an absence of noise that is disturbing; it is the noises that replace what may have once been there.

The desolate wind through buildings with cracked and broken windows.

The sloshing of waves against boats that haven't been properly secured.

The creaking of doors just off their frames.

The electric whine of fans going on for too long.

The rattle of street signs just slightly off their hinges.

It's the death rattle of a city, of a people. Without proper care, the sand will soon spread, topple the walls and submerge the city in a sea of golden yellow and baked earth brown.

"You guys recall that year we spent in Mistral?" Linda spoke up, the wind over desert sands is one thing, and the death-noise of a city is something else entirely. Silence was meant to be broken, and in this case, it had to be.

"Yeah, I still have the scars." Harriet nodded, "We took a hell of a beating. Sure as fuck wasn't from the Grimm, though."

"I know, right?" Linda nodded.

"Place was a hellhole." Yeager agreed. "Remember how cold it was all the time?" He asked.

"Sun never came out, that's why." Harriet said.

"How do people live like that?"

"Fuck, they don't. Why do you think they have so much fucking crime all the time? People get fucking salty when they don't get enough sun."

"I don't disagree." Daphne spoke up, it was no surprise; she was from Mistral, after all.

"Still, that's besides the point, what did you think about their Hunters?"

"Pretty decent, better than Vale's at least."

"You think so?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"They knew how to kill."

"Fuckers know how to Murder, you mean. "

Of all the slimiest scum on Remnant, Mistral had the fair share of them. Harsh conditions and cramped living with a lack of natural resources made for poor neighbors all around.

"Ever been to Atlas"

"Nope."

"I have." Daphne spoke up again.

"Really what for?" Harriet turned, looking back at their shield bearer.

"Parts." She hefted Taigan. "Shield needed parts."

"I see," Harriet had hoped for a more interesting reason. "You see any of their Hunters?"

"All the time." She nodded. "Every street corner."

"Don't they use Hunters as Squad or platoon leaders?" Linda asked. "I heard they do that."

"They do, for their more elite squads I think. Regular troops can't keep up without gear." Yeager replied.

"They any good, their hunters?" Harriet asked Daphne

"Wouldn't know. Never fought one."

"I had a run in with one of their regular soldiers once." Yeager said.

"No shit?" Harriet raised her brow. "You went to Atlas too?"

"No, but some of their grunts came here." He said, "But hell, shit, they know how to fight, it's not something I'd like to repeat." Yeager rubbed his jaw, as if imagining a pain. "They're pretty tough, and their armor is actually worth a damn."

"What you get into a fight over?"

"I can't remember, something stupid I think."

"I bet it was over a woman, was it that?" Linda grinned, "Were you schmoozing over another mans wife?"

"Maybe," He smiled, "What's it to you? Upset that I'm hitting on someone other than you?"

"Please, like I'd ever want to have anything to do with an ape like you."

"Enough of that you two fuckers, how about this instead- any idea on what the White Fang wanted?" Harriet asked.

"That really even a question." Yeager looked back at one of the bullet riddled corpses, splayed at an unnatural angel; head tucked under one arm as if to take cover from something.

Linda agreed, "They had a shot at taking down Vacuo, they already did the same to Vale."

"Anyway, I'm more worried about the Grimm, than any stinking white fang." Yeager said. "Nothings back there to stop them from coming in at their leisure with that gate busted."

"You're the one who said that it's pointless to patch up." Linda retorted.

"It'd be pointless to wall up against whatever the fuck managed to bust it down in the first place, I'm talkin' about average 'Stalkers." Yeager replies. It's all the incentive that Linda needs in order to fire back.

"Maidens, you keep going on about this damn super-grimm, what makes you think it's real?"

"Uh, fuckin' hello. You see the holes in the gate? The fuckin' bodies?"

"Maybe it was just an especially large Death Stalker, it doesn't need to be some new breed of Grimm."

"You really believe that? Just a big-ass 'Stalker? If that's the case, why haven't we seen it yet?"

"It's more than just that." Harriet is actually thankful that Daphne interrupts, the bickering between Yeager and Linda is a constant thing that eats away at her patience, but on the other hand, Daphne only interrupts when she has something to say- and its rarely comforting. "We haven't seen _any_ Grimm." The point hits home like a hammer. They've been walking for well over several hours by now, and the only sights that had greeted them were the occasional bodies of fallen Civilians, Watchmen and White Fang, all dead from gunshot wounds.

Holiday thinks, silent for several seconds, pondering the repercussions this could mean, and all of them arrive at the same unsettling conclusion. Only Linda speaks up, hoping against hope. "Maybe they migrated?" She weakly suggests.

Daphne smashes such hopes with a hammerblow of brutal reason. "A battle was just fought here. The amount of despair should have had every grimm nearby come running." She says, looking each of her teammates in the eye one by one. "So why aren't there any Grimm here?" They say nothing. "There's only one reason that comes to mind."

"An Aberration." Harriets tone is cold. The thought of one of those abominations possibly lurking within Sadomah is a terrible idea- a nightmare that nobody wants any part of. Aberrations were rare- thankfully so- but they appeared from time to time. Grossly mutated monstrosities that were as alien as they were dangerous. Nobody knew how they came about exactly, all that was known was that even other Grimm stay away from them. Such desolations of Grimm were usually the only sign that an Abberation was in the area before it attacked.

Daphne nodded to Harriet. "It only stands to reason."

The team is quite for another stretch. None of them had ever gone against one, nor even seen one. All they had to go by were videos and stories, and those were more than enough to convince that they should count themselves lucky that they haven't crossed paths with such a creature. "We should keep moving." Harriet spoke, breaking the sudden chill. "It'll be dark soon."

…

Harriet turned over in her sleeping bag, trying to retain as much heat as possible in the face of the cold desert winds that blew though the shattered glass windows and under the kitchen door of the restaurant that they were calling home for the night. She rolled over again, almost sliding off her pad. Her sleeping bag smelled of dried blood, old beer, and musty sweat. They were scents that calmed her down almost instantly every time she laid down for the night. Tonight was not one of those nights, and her worries plagued her still.

They'd made it at last to Soddoma, only to be met with a ruin of a city, a bleak picture that looked like every other wasted desert settlement only this time on a much larger scale. They'd left Shade to escape just such a fate, only to wind up running right into it. She knew her team like the back of her hand, and right now, they were on the verge of breaking apart. It didn't look like it on the surface but the resentments and anger were starting to boil up.

She was counting their options, they had dried rations, and if they doled them out sparingly enough they may be able to last two weeks tops, maybe three if they don't do anything overly strenuous. In reality, team Holiday could only really hope that they could come across a reliable stash of food or water, something to replenish their supplies. Anything that could hold them together while she tried to think of some distant untouched community they could settle down in. There was no way they could ever hope to make the trip to Vale or Atlas. None of them knew how to fly a bullhead, or pilot a boat across deep ocean waters.

Harriet faked a cough, loud enough to be heard over the quiet sounds of passion coming from Yeager and Linda. There was a rustle, and then nothing more. Harriet sighed, quiet and bemused, Linda was a strange girl. Stranger than Daphne even. There was no mistaking that Linda was a Faunus supremacist, something that Yeager never stopped poking fun at, and it quickly came to shouting whenever they were off the field. On the surface one could say that Linda and Yeager were the perfect antagonist to each other: the publicly stern and vicious Linda, the same Huntress that would shred through a pack of Grimm with her razor whip quickly enough to make them look like shallow speed bumps, and the go lucky human-hunter who kept his distance from close quarters, carefully picking off priority grimm from range.

There must've been something about that saying, 'opposites attract' but that still didn't answer the question as to why the two of them were in a secret relationship. Harriet could hear more soft whisperings, and the guilty movements of her team's close-quarters specialist moving off, back to her bag.

Harriet relaxed and closed her eyes fully. Inter-team relationships weren't the issue, forbidding a group of four young adults who were put into a guillotine-like position of great peril from forming close-knit bonds was absurd, and to expect those close-knit bonds to not grow into something more was deranged. Harriet supposed that was why Atlas hunters were always so tightly strung and uptight- military discipline and a ban on any team-intimacy. Even though she wasn't in an Atlas hunter team, Linda went to great lengths to make her relationship with Yeager secret. It was an extremely poorly kept secret, but Harriet played along like she didn't know, Daphne as well.

She could hear Daphne rustling nearby, just outside of the kitchen, keeping watch, soaking in the cool night air of the desert, and the breeze of the sea. Daphne was essentially an active radar set, capable of picking up on the slightest movements even through walls. This natural ability was well and truly the keystone of the group, and the trek across the desert had been harder on her than anyone else.

She had thick patterns of fur across her extremities as well as a mane of it around her neck, pinkish in color. Overheating for her was a very real possibility; no matter how much water she carried. She had to dress lightly and take frequent breaks. Even so, the weather was not kind to her, so much so that she was more or less nocturnal ever since moving to Vacuo from Mistral and enrolling in Shade Academy. Even though she was her teammate, there was a lot about Daphne that Harriet didn't know.

She didn't know why Daphne had come to Vacuo, for instance, why would a reserved and quiet girl like her live among the outward and boisterous people of Vacuo? Furthermore there was also the question of her previous affiliations. There was no such thing as a Hunter without sins. The job was a dangerous one that chewed up the weak and crushed the hesitant. When you were out in the field, there could be no room for error; there could be no doubt between teammates- no animosity.

Equipment must function perfectly, and tactics most be executed with extreme precision. Hunters are of themselves, weapons, they are weapons that are designed to function at the highest degree of perfection. It is not outside of reason to expect such stress to damage them. The weight on a Hunters shoulders is great, and from time to time, cracks can form, and there is no easy solution to fixing such cracks in the infrequent time they have off the field.

For Linda, her solution was to put on a mask of unbreakable pride. She talked down to the humans and built up her esteem as a Faunus and a veteran Hunter. This public mask lasted only so long before she fell back into the guilty shyness of her true nature, huddling close to Yeager, trying to make herself feel less worthless- trying to forget the bloody mistakes of her past.

Harriet healed herself by breaking herself, extreme physical training that left her bruised and bloody- pushups until her knuckles bled and arms screamed, crunches until her guts were mulched and every movement caused her to vomit- running miles until her feet were nothing but a collection of burst open blisters. She dealt herself a more physical and real pain so as to blot out the things she has seen and done.

Yeager treated himself with more illicit things, as he was one who was much akin to dominance as the Grimm were. Vacuo was a kingdom built on strength, and its underground fighting rings mirrored that. Gladiatorial arenas are where Yeager finds himself. Illegal tournaments, unregulated prize fights where the winner took home the cash and the losers went home on stretchers. He had an uncanny ability to seek these places out. Harriet had several opinions of such unregulated fighting rings, all of them differ from Yeager's, but with the extra coin he brought in from his winnings, they were able to pocket better gear. So she stayed silent.

Then there was Daphne. Harriet knew nothing of her Vices, of her pleasures and pains. She was an enigma to all reason. Did she just simply repress what she has seen? Does she bottle it up inside and move on about her life? It couldn't be possible. To throw yourself out into the same field as the Grimm and come out alive is a simple matter of skill but to be able to cope with the stress of having crossed blades with death is an entirely different matter. Daphne had no readily identifiable crutch, she didn't drink she didn't sleep around; she didn't deal with the devil at all. Harriet didn't know a single thing about what kept her from cracking.

It was this reason alone that made Harriet uneasy.

…

There is no greater virtue in Vacuo, than that of Tenacity.

The ability to push through discomfort and endure is the founding principle that the entire kingdom was built upon.

After strip mining and industry stripped away the natural resources of the land, and all that was left was sand and ocean, it became necessity to learn austerity, and from that, came the greatest strengths of Vacuo's people. It has lead Vacuo to greatness as one of the four kingdoms of Remnant. Without it, there is no question that the people of Vacuo would have died by now.

It may have been better, had they died. Maybe, Tenacity, after awhile, becomes masochism. Becomes suffering for the sake of suffering. Becomes cruel.

The question has to be asked of a people willing to undergo tremendous torment for no reward, for what point is there in suffering if it is all for another day of torture?

In the beginning, in the early days after the fall of Vale, some students had said it was over. They said that a quick death would be the best choice. Some had even gone through with it and killed themselves.

They had been the smart ones. They didn't have to live through the hell that was Shade Academy now. They got out early, before the real horror began. Every day was a new exploration into depravity, a new foray into just how far a person is willing to go just to survive no matter what atrocities they must commit their soul to.

The once noble virtues that had shaped the academy were all but forgotten by this point. The occupants are shadows of themselves. Whatever ideals they once followed now abandoned for the sake of living one more day.

People they once called friends or instructors are now just enemies or opportunities, flesh to be traded to the malignant raiders that churn the sands of Vacuo in search of lucrative spoils, be they sentient or not.

Slavers, almost worse than the grimm, redeemed only in the eyes of the pale shades of Shade in that they will trade flesh for water. The weak and the sick, friend or not, it doesn't matter to those who cling to that corrupted virtue they call tenacity.

The Slavers come during the day, doing business with those who have left behind their nobility, but it is at night that the Grimm come. Skulking inside the perimeter of Shade, looking for ways to enter the Academy proper. Sometimes, the smaller Grimm manage to fit through a window, or leap through a skylight. Whatever resistance those inside may have once possessed is now drained, what matters now is survival. If you can run faster than the person behind you, than that is what counts, nothing else.

Even worse than the slavers, is perhaps the Faunus of Shade. For as long as history has been written, Humans have called them Beasts. Animals. Inhuman creatures. It would seem to be, that they have now accepted such names, and made them their own. Of these titles, they have added one more.

Predator.

Sometimes, if a human student left the safety of whatever little corner they have hid away in, they would come across those that have delighted in their more animalistic traits, and now partake in the sweet tenderness of long-pork. There are those that even do so not because of the ravaging hunger and dreadful thirst, but because they enjoy it. All the threats, the discrimination, the scowls and sneers, to be able to pay back those torments tenfold and dominate those that once held lash and whip over them- _to hear them beg and scream_ \- is a pleasure unlike any other.

Even these predators- such is what they now call themselves- are but prey, in the face of what comes at night. When the Grimm crawl out from their burrows, hiding their forms from the scorching sun, they alight upon Shade, for thy smell fear and misery there. They scrape through windows and skylights, decayed walls and burrow under floors. The night is dreadfully silent, as if the universe delights in the dread that comes from listening to those few sane souls hear the click-clack-tacka-klak of many chitinious legs tapping against tile hallways. Perhaps, it is of the great irony, of hunting hunters in their own academy, of stalking prey amongst halls once thought safe- if the Grimm are capable of knowing this, than it is their glory alone. In truth, it will not be long before there are no more left to hunt.

The clock ticks down to the last scrap of flesh left in Shade academy.

But it will not strike Nil tonight.

…

The hunt is on again. The three miserable wretches in tattered clothes and torn up rags can hear the haunting chitter of clicking mandibles echo through the halls. It used to be something that inspired true dread. Now? Now it just echoed in minds long since destroyed by fear, inured to the violence that happened around them.

There was no escape from the hell that had become their lives, hollowed of eye and quite of voice. The barricaded door to their small windowless room was cracked and broken in, held together with nails and cementing paste. There was an air duct that the smallest of them could crawl through, to bring back water stolen from those who bartered away the lives of others, and sometimes the dread long-pork from the camps of Faunus students who had nothing left to lose.

The room smelt of piss and stink, but compared to the searing heat of outside, it was almost bearable. It used to be a classroom, with its windows now boarded up and covered over, the blackboard even still had scrawling's of the last lesson to have been had here, during a time almost forgotten to memory- that sacred refuge.

Muffled by the walls, but not nearly quieted enough, the students, they hear the screech of pain, they hear the sound of monsters, countless beasts, scraping through the halls to the site where a murder has taken place. One of the students, curled in their corner, hides his face in his legs, the smallest of the three sits under a table, nursing a broken finger, while the third and oldest- she keeps counting the ticks of a clock- the last one in the academy that has not yet run out of batteries. Six more hours till sunrise.

The screams seem to echo closer in the adjacent hallway, filtering through under the barricaded door, almost seeming to vibrate the nails. Not that they would or could do anything to stop one of the smaller 'Stalkers, should it try to claw its way through- only silence hid them from the stalkers, but against the other students, against the slave-traders and fiends that they once called classmates, it was just enough.

The girl looks up, screamed in the hallway, closer now, not just echoes. Her body goes ridged and the boy in his corner watches her carefully. He shakes his head slowly, almost pleadingly, the younger boy just rocks back and forth, seemingly fascinated with how swollen his finger has become. The purple and red, mixing together.

Very clearly now, running feet down the hallway, the excited chitter of mandibles and click-clack-tacka-tak of countless legs, the three students hold their breath, and nearly gasp when there is a pounding on the classroom door, on the windows- screaming, crying, pleading, begging for someone to save a sorry soul, the chitters become even louder now- nearly there- More begging, sobbing sniffling crying and hiccupped whines. The older girl covers her ears, whispering to herself, seeming to dig her nails into her scalp like she was going to rake trenches in her skull and peel off the hair and the flesh and the-

Screams of true fear, dread manifest, the chitters take on that keening pitched screech that 'Stalkers made when they were closing in for the kill- and the running bare feet take off- bolting further down the hallway.

The hunt was on.

"Third one tonight." The girl whispers. "I think that was Goldy. She was friends with my sister."

"There was nothing you could do." The older boy whispers back. "Just try and forget."

"I used to play with her back home." The girl continues. Rocking back and forth more quickly. We'd talk about what we wanted our Weddings to be like."

"Please, stop talking."

"She wanted it to be on a beach in mistral- like the one they had in that movie, the one with the two Hunters."

"They'll hear you, they'll come back, please be quiet,"

"So what?" She looks up now, matching the boys' stare. "Maybe they should come back." Her voice wavers, but she presses on. "Maybe it'd be best if we all just die, instead of just sitting around like this." She throws down the clock, staggering to her feet- legs shaking but stiff all the same.

"What're you doing?" The boy hisses. "Don't do something stupid."

"Something stupid? Haven't we been doing that already. I thought we wanted to be Hunters, damnit." She staggers over to the door, more strength in her steps as the blood begins to flow in her veins.

"Don't you dare open that door." Crawling on hands and scabby knees, the older boy scrambles over, frantic, afraid. "You'll get us killed, you kill us-"

"I don't care anymore!" She shouts, voice horse and rasping. She kicks out, catching the boy in the throat with her foot, cutting him off and sending him scrambling back. She picks up the worn hammer, crouches down and with effort she starts prying off the lowest boards on the doors barricade, tears and stream down her face. She can still hear the screaming coming from further down the hallway, perhaps even more than one.

She pries away another board, there is a gap under the door- made from when the younger boy was too loud, and a 'Stalker tried to get inside before another unlucky soul caught its attention. It was wide enough for her to just fit through, her clothes caught and her skin tore as she pulled herself through, into the hallway. She still held the hammer, the air was dim and dank, and it smelt like old sweat and other unwholesome things. She listened, and the screams came. She stumbles blindly, the half-light from some fire or bloody shard of the moon filtered in from broken open windows.

She followed the screams- the faint light of the stalkers tail growing stronger as the screams curtailed off into some groaning, choking gasp. The hammer haft is slick in her hand, and her heart beats like a hummingbird fluttering wings. "h-Hey!" She croaks- three bobbing tails illuminate the hallway, dim heady light more fitting for an opera house performance shadows over a punctured skull and crushed torso- she recognizes the off-blond pigtails but the face is missing- a gaping hole where it should be.

Like machines, the three stalkers turn around, clusters of red eyes, unblinking in shadow. There is that chittering, almost like laughing- or was it screaming? Her legs tremble and her eyes bleed tears- this was her death, but it was through her choice. Yet, at the end, she could push herself forwards, she could throw herself at the damned monsters. There was that corpse just behind them- and she kept on putting her face where that hole was, kept on seeing her and she kept on screaming now.

So she sobbed, and she ran.

Behind her, the screeches, 'Stalkers on the hunt, chasing her down, spindly insect legs scratching against the tile floor- Ticka-tack-clack-tick- a crazed metronome timing off her last seconds on Remnant. She could barley see- the only light available to her was her killers hell-glow that radiated off their luring tails. The closer they got the easier it was to see, the easier it was to outpace them, but such it was that the harder it became to see, the closer they crawled.

She really didn't have a chance. She rounded a corner, almost slipping on what she almost casually assumed to be an old corpse, and her shin slammed into an overturned locker, her head slammed against the wall, and she went splaying forwards with an almost surprised grunt. The pain in her ankle kept her from standing, so instead, she crawled, pulling herself forwards, hand over hand. She could hear the chittering behind her, just around the corner; death would take its time to reach her. It would make her suffer for her crimes.

She reached forwards to pull herself again, hands splaying blindly in the darkness. Her fingers touched something, and almost like instinct she gripped.

Her fingers closed around a boot, warm to the touch, smelling of oil and sand.

She looked up, and a blazing star ignited before her eyes.

Blinded for a moment, she squinted. Pushing back the pain, there was a flame above her, and with it, she could hear the faint hiss of gas. Behind the flickering flame she could make out a dark hole, but even more important was the figure now illuminated to her eyes.

Above her, standing, bulky and imposing, was a soldier. A grim and weathered face looked down at her with eyes obscured by shadow save for a single softly glowing lens. She felt her breath catch, her lips moved but no words came out. Behind her, she heard the screeches, in her shock, forgetting her pursuers. She could only watch, as the figure above her looked up, slow, calm, and the flame shifted forwards, outlining some long barrel-

A snick-hiss, and then the world above her erupted into a conflagration of heat and light. The air in the hallway was sucked inwards before a torrent of fire lanced forwards, down the hallway, the paint on the eroding walls peeled back and the girl felt her skin sear and crackle. The inside of her mouth felt like an oven as she tried to suck in a breath so as to merely scream. Worse still was the smell, she heard the screech of the 'Stalkers, cut off almost at once as the sound of searing bone and popping flesh took away her need to scream- the stink, burning grimm, instead violated her nose and throat.

Her eyes now watering- the torrent stopped, the hallway behind her alight with chemical fire, she looked upwards again. The man with the flamethrower paid her no attention, instead stepping over her, her grip slipping from the boot she had so unconsciously kept ahold of. Only now she saw the others, bulky rifles held with callused hands, following in double lines after the man with the flame weapon. She stayed on the floor, her skin burnt, she watched them step over her like she was a simple obstical.

Another sit of boots right in front of her. She looked up, and was almost blinded again as a piercing white light engulfed her. She covered her eyes, and then felt a firm grip on her arm, hoisting her up, forcing her to stand.

There was a voice now, gruff, unflinching, like sandpaper on stone. It spoke not to her, but someone else. It spoke in a language she didn't understand.

"Ordines tuum?"

"Posuit eam in aliis. Sit percontator agere."

"Ut iubes, Commissar." A firm grip takes her by the shoulder. Pulling her along, she stammers something and it goes unheard. A plume of light from behind her, down the hallway, the smell of burning grimm.

...

 **THI SIS THE BIG MEME**


	7. The Apex VII

**Chapters 3-6 have been rewritified on the pain of death and dismemberment by the hoighty toighty holy hole of the ordos most holey.**

...

She never wanted to be a Hunter, never made it her life-goal to be one. Fighting is barbaric, it never solves anything in the clean and manageable way that negotiating did. Yet, people seem to just fall into it like old habit- violence, that is. When they could use words, people use fists.

Daphne didn't understand people. She didn't _Get_ them, they confused her. There were so many different things about people that Daphne had to remember, so many different nuances and specific little details that Daphne just gave up on remembering them all. She wasn't completely hopeless at it, she knew the basics well enough, when people are happy or sad or angry, she knew that well enough, it was the more complex emotions that she didn't know how to compute.

It was hard to get or understand the emotions that people felt, mostly because she never really felt them herself; at least, that's what she thinks. Life had always felt extremely dull. Black and grey with smidgens of white, monochrome shades always over her eyes, destroying the pallet of nature. Daphne never got angry, never got upset, never laughed never cried, never let herself question why she could never feel these things.

It made killing all the more easy, and d it also made the concept of death seem inconsequential. If it was to be the cessation of all feeling, than what reason did she- a person who seemingly is unable to feel- be afraid of it? While she understood such a mindset was unhealthy, she viewed it more as an asset than detriment. She Is very efficient at what she does, she is clean and orderly. She is logical. Leaving mistral was a logical decision, as was joining the shade academy, as was sticking with Holiday through the fall of Vacuo. She doesn't understand her teammates, her partners, comrades, 'friends.' She can read her immediate area- she can scan five hundred feet around her in every direction, and if she concentrates- she can feel through walls. Yet she cant read her teammates, she cant read other people. She just doesn't understand. The pieces don't click.

The desert sun is still rising; the air is only now starting to warm, the ground starting to bake, the cracked black pavement of the street does not yet have its heat-distorting haze. It will soon, but even before that, Daphne pulls on her sports bra- her only real upper clothing, and lets the heat out, to grow up in mistral and migrate west to Vacuo- it was quite uncomfortable. She was fine with it, it was bearable if it meant running free from that hellhole pit filled the endlessly cracking whip. Besides, she had friends now, and from what she understood, friends are supposed to protect each other.

Friends are supposed to behave irrationally. She also had Taigan, and Taigan is her best friend, Taigan can kill, Taigan can kill very well and does so while protecting her. There is no friend better than Taigan. Taigan will keep her from going back to that pit of scowls and screams and the endlessly cracking whip. She felt something ahead, her antenna straightened, feathery things that caught the breeze, and pulled secrets from the air. She closed her eyes, letting the mental map construct in her head like a city of lights and outlines. This city was dead; it made none of the right sounds that cities were supposed to make. Shouting and yelling, the crank of machinery and whine of electricity, the sound of engines and echo of footsteps on sidewalks. It is a dead city. But she can feel no Grimm, can hear no growls or click of mandibles.

A complex, farther ahead, around three hundred feet, likely less, she can feel something anomaly's. She stays quiet, it isn't immediately concerning, and hasn't given credence to any threat just yet. So she says nothing, reserving her judgment until she can get a more noticeable fix on what it exactly is. When Harriet speaks up, the water treatment plant coming into view, Daphne realizes what it was she was sensing.

The sounds of a city, or, at the very least, the heart of one that has refused to stop beating.

"Water treatment plant." Harriet says, "Looks deserted."

"It's not," Daphne says, Harriet looks back at her. "I can hear the machines."

"You don't say." Harriet mutters, an idea beginning to form. "Maybe we should pop in and have a looksee."

Team Holiday breaks into a soft run, kicking up sand with every step as they eat up the meters between them and the once strong heart of Sodomah.

"Daphne, what you got?" Harriet snaps her fingers, sliding into place next to the front double doors to the 'tandem water & electric.' The building itself was a modern structure, wide and flat, like most buildings in Vacuo. Massive pipes led into one side of the building, running in from the sea, and countless storage tanks sat ready inside, filled with all the water that they could carry.

Even before the fall of the CCT's, it was desalinization plants like this one that kept the kingdom alive, overseas shipments gave the kingdom resources it otherwise wouldn't have, and through that bloated the standard of living past what could be sustainable when those shipments ceased. The slow degradation of society began, first the council collapsed, the academies starved, Grimm ran rampant, and then only the coastal cities remained, but even they fell.

Daphne was the first to enter, hefting Taigan in front of her, the micro gravity amplifiers inside her shield spinning up with a squeeze of the handle inside her shields brace. Her antenna were stiff and alert, catching the air and all the subtle vibrations contained within. She could make out a picture in her minds eye even before breaching, everything was clear to her as she passed through the wide dented double doors to the lobby. Dust, cobwebs, dried and desiccated plants along with flickering lights and a stale stagnant smell to the air, while there were no bodies visible, the place smelled of death. More noticeable however was the sound, the feeling, the electric throb of machinery operating deeper within the desalinization plant. The soft whine of massive pumps and deeper more throaty murmur of electricity exposed to air under intense pressure.

"Find anything, Daph?" Harriet asked, sliding in after Daphne, Yeager and Linda followed after. Typical of most, Harriet was on full alert once she was within the confines of a building, ears perked, glare piercing outwards, looking for any potential threats despite the assurances of Daphne. You can never be too careful in abandoned places, the creations may have once been that of man but in their absence such dens turn to the realm of beasts.

"Just machines." Daphne shakes her head, Taigan still held at the ready before her even as the rest of her team relaxes slightly, weapons lowered but still able to be quickly brought to bear. There were papers, files, folders, and all manner of detritus scattered across the floor, leading back to its point of origin, the overturned and ransacked file cabinets, drawers pulled open and spreadsheets caking the floor around the receptionists desk. The two side officers looked no different.

Yeager took several of the files and casually perused them, before looking at the desktop terminals at the receptionists desk, he idly punched a few keys, seeing if the terminals woke up and was not surprised that they remained dormant and dead. "Place is fucked," he remarks.

"Not any different from any other place within a few miles give or take."

"Thing is it's still running," Harriet whistles. "I know these places are automated and all that, but this has to be pushing the limits."

"We're not alone." Daphne suddenly announces, looking around, calm, despite the words she spoke, and the alarm that seemed to trigger in her teammates.

"Shit, really?"

"There are several living things within this complex."

"Wish you had told me this earlier, Daph,"

"Daph shrugs. "It took time to grow accustomed to the noise the machines generate, and difference it between the sounds of living creatures."

"Linda, lock this place down with Yeager, Daphne you go with me, let's find these fuckers."

Harriet and her moth Faunus friend took to the hallways, Daphne taking the lead, her antenna swiveled and bobbed as she kept Taigan in front of her, the Heavy circular saw-come-shield was durable and solid enough to take blows from seemingly anything Remnant had to throw at Her, and Harriet was more than willing to take advantage of that, pride be damned.

This water treatment plant was one of the many modern desalinization plants that were constructed along the coastline of Vacuo by the authorities of Sodomah. It was a much more modern affair than the makeshift scrap machines that were constructed by the desperate populace long ago when the Desert oasis' ran dry and plunged the central valleys into a hellish existence of heat and sand. It apparently had not occurred to many that such an eventuality was even possible that there would ever be a future where the people would want for anything. In the old days of Vacuo- the kingdom was regarded as some sort of paradise. Such a dream quickly eroded and turned to so much dust along with the oases.

The first few desalinization plants were rushed things, pulled together and built with whatever parts were available. They were unreliable and crude, but they worked; dust powered engines and turbines pumping in hundreds of gallons of seawater in exchange for barley enough to sustain a small village and resupply caravans. Further engineering saw to larger yields of fresh, drinkable water, until eventually large coastline spanning factories were made in so as to quench the thirst of an entire nation. Before the CCT fell in Vale, water was airlifted to outlying settlements around Vacuo, but with the absence of the CCT, air travel became hazardous, Radar stations could not broadcast the forecast of the weather and the movements of flying grimm. The much shorter-range radar of Bullheads and heat gliders were not nearly strong or sensitive enough to pick up on the fast moving species of flying grimm that would descend from the clouds and rip the transports to shreds. Ground based caravans were not much better off, only the recent exports of the Sodomah armored transports had seen to alleviating the drought blighted communities that huddled together in furtive hovels among the savannahs beyond the great desert sands.

It was those same caravans that had given hope to the academy students when the underground storage tanks ran dry, and the bottled reserves were exhausted. More to the question was why the White Fang hit Sodomah. What's the point of plunging what remained of Vaccuo into the parched sands and dooming the thousands of Faunus that lived here?

Daphne stopped, Harriet nearly bumped into her. Neither said anything, Harriet waiting with patient intensity, Daphne cocking her head, her antenna shifting and bending, catching the slight vibrations of the air, formulating a precise map in her minds eye. She quietly motioned Harriet closer, and whispered. "Movement in the next room."

"How many?" Harriet asks, she thumbs the haft of Melody, the axe head and pole extend with a snap-click. "Human or Grimm?"

"Around five." Daphne leans her head against the wall, pressing her antenna against the cold plaster. "Can't tell, the machines; they're vibrating the walls. I can't tell exactly."

"We'll breach, just to be safe. Might be grimm, maybe just looters."

"If that's the case, I'll take point." Daphne said, stepping before the doorway, Taigan raised before her, its rim glowing softly blue as the internal dust generator spun into action. Behind her, Harriet gripped Melody, the off-orange halberd glinting.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

"Punch it, Daph."

Daphne lunged forwards.

The doors exploded outwards, sailing across the room, a concussive thud bending them like tinfoil. The smashed into the opposite wall, cracking cement and embedding themselves fully. Yet, before they even were half way across the room, There was Harriet, vaulting over Daphne and twisting around mid air before landing, Melody whipping around her waist- and coming to rest in her back hand as she crouched low, legs spread, eyes ablaze.

"Fucking what-?" The shout greeted her, as well as the cascading sound of automatic rifles snapping off of safe.

White masks, with black and red stripes. Well over twenty, all of them looking at her.

Harriet didn't move, she kept her stance, and calmly glanced back at Daphne. "This is a lot more than 'around five'."

Daphne shrugged, "I can be wrong sometimes."

…

 **Every time I hear thunder I cry, because I imagine that it's Harambe up in heaven slamming the soul of some naughty-boi up against the great big zoo wall in the sky.**


End file.
